The first thing I want to tell you is that Ami Simms has a new website called

Find A Quilt Teacher.

It is a great resource for guilds and shops to locate great teachers and lecturers.

Please visit the site and tell all the guild program chair people and shop owners about it.

You can find me listed there.

Now for the fun stuff.

I was booked to teach in Florida recently,

so my friend Barbara and I decided to make a road trip out of it.

We left Graham, Texas on Sunday morning and drove to Mobile Alabama.

We spent the night in Mobile and on Monday morning drove to Thomasville, Georgia.

Thomasville is a very quaint and beautiful town in southern Georgia just north of Tallahassee, Florida.

In Thomasville we wondered around the neat little antique and gift shops

and spent the night at a bed and breakfast called Dawson Street Inn.

This is Barbara in the living room.

Me in the dining room ready for our scrumptious breakfast.

And me pretending to play the piano.

We had a wonderful dinner at George and Louie’s.

The fried green tomatoes were to die for.

We took pictures of some of the homes and THE BIG OAK TREE.

This tree is enormous!!

We visited Pebble Hill Plantation. 

Don’t you love the moss in the trees?

The house and the grounds were a sight to see.

Then we drove into Florida and on to

The Villages, Florida.

Watch for the next installment of this road trip.

Several Friends and I went on a road trip to the Dallas Quilt Show.

We left Graham around 8:00, stopped in South Lake to pick up another friend

and arrived at the show around 11:30.

Just in time to eat lunch!

We always put the most important things first.

We beat the crowd and then started to shop and look at the quilts.

There were lots of beautiful quilts to see this year.

These are just a few of the quilts:

Bail Out

Liz Joe maker and quilter

Butterflies and Bloomers

Dee Ann Hodges maker Meri Pinner quilter

Corazones, Corazones y Mas Corazones

Sherry Evans maker Liz Coker quilter

Corks

Carol Morrissey maker and quilter

Dancing for Savannah

Nancy Howse maker and quilter

Deep in the Heart of Texas Childhood Home in Grapevine

Glenda Jones maker

Suzanne Louth quilter

Cranes in Stars

(made using my Chick ‘N Stars pattern)

Jolene Mershon maker

Susan Corbett quilter

This quilt is made from jeans. I am sorry I did not get the maker’s name.

This is my friend Gail

Glowing 9 Patch

Theri Dufour maker

Karen Nelson quilter

Glowing 9 Patch close-up

Jacobean Dream

Janice Bentley maker

La Vie en Rose

Eliane Bailey maker

Richard Larson quilter

Spring

Paula Baxley maker

Dana Goyer quilter

Urban Reflections

Lu Peters & Connie Akers makers and quilters

Vertigo

Kathy York maker and quilter

That is my friend Becky looking at the quilt.

Victory Garden

Sherry Evans maker

Lisa Coker quilter

Whose Woods are these

Jane Kennedy maker

The Diva and The Musician quilt made with my

Carpenter’s Star pattern for the center.

Kathryn Taylor maker and quilter.

This is made with Betty Boop fabric.

Betty Boop is quilted on it.

A Quarks Tale

Best of Show

Kelly Monroe maker and quilter

Broken Star quilt from my Simple Stars Beautiful Quilts book

hanging in the Prodigy Quilter booth

Evening Star quilt on a table in the booth of

Heirloom Quilt Shop from Fort Smith, Arkansas

Evening Star quilt in another booth.

Modern Art With Fabric

covering a table in the booth of

Houston St. Mercantile Granbury TX

Modern Art With Fabric

hanging in the booth of

Poppy Quilt and Sew from Georgetown, TX

Shooting Stars quilt

hanging in the booth of

Quilts With A Heart from Priddy, Texas

We had a great time at the show and stopped to eat at

P. F. Chang on our way home.

I recently taught at a retreat held at

"The Ranch at Possum Kingdom Lake".

There were eight ladies from the McKinney area and we had a great day.

They were a lot of fun to be with and I enjoyed teaching in such a beautiful venue.

The Ranch is a gated community on the Brazos river with gorgeous views of the river and ranch land.

 This is the entrance gate. 

 The home where the retreat was held was a stone structure decorated with a Texas theme.

This is the the living room

and the staircase to the bedrooms.

The upstairs bedrooms were all decorated around a theme.

The bluebonnet room was blue and white. 

Notice the headboard made out of a door and crown molding.

The blue and white quilt was perfect.

The fish room had a fish over the bed and a great bookcase made out of a canoe. 

The cowboy room had rustic bunk beds.

The western room had an Indian to guard everything.

The master bedroom had a rock fireplace with boots and a great rabbit on the mantel.

Take a look at this bath tub!

This ironing station was one of a kind.

The ladies worked hard and made great progress on their

Evening Star or Shining Star quilt tops.

 I love looking at the different fabric choices everyone makes.

The fellowship with such wonderful people is what really makes my job fun.

I also want to announce the winners of two contests.

The contest on my blog as a guest blogger for The Quilting Gallery was won by Sandra Keesee.

  The winner of the contest on dellaQ Textiles was Christi Scheffel.

Congratulations to both of you.