Pizza, Chicago Style!!

Paul asked where we went for pizza last night…..

Giordano’s!

I knew I was in the right place as soon as I smelled the pizza baking, and got a load of the interior…..or – forget the interior, I was looking DOWN ---my eyes were on the floor!

I NEED MY MAGIC MARKERS!! :cD

The Eleventh Commandment! I must obey! :c)

And it was good, all the way to the crust! I love when the crust is good enough that you have to eat that part too…if the crust is left over sitting on the plate inedible, we call it “Pizza Bones” at our house ---

Chicago style deep dish with spinach….MMMMM!

Thinner crusted “special” with sausage, mushrooms, peppers and onions --- Whoooo boy!

There were 8 of us at the table, and there were leftovers – this was a LOT of food, but it was so good!

And it’s a good thing that I’ve been getting out for a 3.5 mile walk-jog every morning since I got here – it’s the only way to keep the poundage at bay. :c/

I do love good food. Lynda asked me the other day at Culvers how I manage not to weigh 300lbs with all the good food that I come across every day. BURN CALORIES! That’s the best way --- get the metabolism working and burning. And also ---you don’t have to eat the whole thing in one sitting. Often times I’ll only eat half, and save the other part for the next day’s lunch if I can…..or……just walk away from it. Just because it is in front of you doesn’t mean you need to devour the whole thing. Eat half.

It’s hard throwing away 1/2 of a dish of ice cream! But basically, it’s all calories in, and calories burned.

I love food too much to completely ban things from my diet. But one dessert with 4 or 5 spoons is a great way for everyone to get a taste without feeling like you gorged yourself on the whole thing.

And I figure there will be time to be skin and bones when they put me 6 foot under. At that point….I won’t be able to say “Man, I wish I had enjoyed that piece of chocolate cake!”

Antiquing at Gary’s Picks!

Next door to Prairie Stitches in Oswego, IL is a darling antique shop called “Gary’s Picks.”

Don’t you just feel like quilts and antiques just GO together? I wish all antique stores had quilt shops next door to them, or the quilt shops would have antique malls next to them – how much happier would this girl be?

After we had our little shopping spree at Prairie Stitches ---we wandered next door to see what interesting things we would find.

We weren’t disappointed!

Old bicycles and model planes up by the antique tin ceiling? A feast for the eyes! Where do we start first? I’m usually pretty methodical when discovering a place like this…it’s either cover every inch going clockwise or counter clock wise…depending on where the first quilty item sighting is found!

How about a cutter quilt piece of a string star behind glass, with some bits of vintage thread crochet tucked in? I loved this – if my suitcase weren’t already at weight limits, and if this wasn’t fragile, it might have come home with me!

I spied some burgundy and white folded up in a basket, and we unfolded it to reveal this “Baby Bunting” quilt ---isn’t this a striking pattern? I think those are Sandy’s feet below the quilt, and Jan is in the pink holding the edge up ---

Here’s a close up of the blocks…the quarter circle at the base of the arrays is machine topstitched --- evidently this piecer did not enjoy curved piecing either! She machine appliqued them down! My guess is that this quilt dates to around 1910.

Not far from the 1910 quilt was a 1960’’s elongated hexie! Look at those prints! These are the prints of my early childhood ---I can’t believe we actually wore any of this stuff…LOL Do YOU recognize any of these fabrics?!

We wandered the aisles, picking up things, examining them, talking about them, “remembering when” and firmly deciding that if those items happened DURING our life times, they could not POSSIBLY be described as ANTIQUE ---right?!

There was a very cute, albeit fairly shredded and fragile “Not quite an ocean waves” scrappy top….that had me fascinated just by the pattern play.

It had fun fabrics from about 1920 on forward through the 30s..maybe into the 40s…but it had been washed and was all a thread mess on the back side and the edges were really ragged -- -fun though, don’t you agree?

a 1970s hexagon quilt was peeking out of a drawer…some of the fabrics look as new as the modern fabrics today --- and that FLORAL!? It reminds me of Goldie Hawn’s dress on Laugh In back in the day! ((Sock it to me!))

Some giant scrappy vintage maple leaf blocks in wild fabrics ---

And a more traditional Grandmother’s Flower Gardn in lovely 30s prints with nile green pathways --

There’s Jan doing “Killroy” behind a 1960s funky log cabin quilt….this had really great fabrics in it!

And sigh – this pretty baby, a singer 66 needed to stay behind – as much as I tried to convince the girls that someone needed to adopt her --- she was in beautiful shape, but a bit pricey ---someone will adopt her and give her a new life.

If you are planning a visit to Prairie Stitches, be sure to leave some time to explore Gary’s Picks right next door. It was a real treat!

iPhone-o-Gram! Midnight Flight at Roberts!

Four patches! Half square triangles! Diamond in a rectangle! Lots of red, cheddar, purple and everything in between!

We are having a great start to our day at Roberts Sewing Center with the Pride of the Prairie guild girls!!

All 20 of them happy to beta test Midnight Flight for me!

Patches, Pinwheels and Pride of the Prairie!

I’m having a wonderful time here in Joliet. What a great group of ladies ---it feels so good to be included, to talk and laugh and form friendships, bonding over common likes and experiences and discovering we all know the same people --- friends of friends are all friends with each other, so the more the merrier!

One wonderful fortuitous moment…my friend and fellow fiber artist, Mickey Depre lives fairly local --- so she and her hubby Paul came to join me at the guild meeting evening ---which was PACKED to the gills!

I was SO flabbergasted and overwhelmed when the meeting started and they asked all of the 57 visiting guests to stand. WOW! 57 guests on top of a very full guild meeting of regular members meant we had a crowd that looked like THIS:

This is while people were still arriving, milling around and hadn’t all taken their seats yet --- but my nerves were escalating! A very special thanks to my friend Lynn Dykstra for coming in from Chicago as well! It was so good to see you again!

Mickey was a great help at the book table --- it was a complete feeding frenzy, and we caught up with each other in between signing books and taking payments ----Her hubby snuck over to take this pic of us:

But let me be honest ---I gotta praise the wonders of photoshop --- because this is the picture in its original form:

Yes, there is a man bending over right by my head. LOL!! Thank you, photoshop!!

((we were laughing hysterically when Paul showed us his original shot!))

Patches & Pinwheels was a great “Quilt Camp Day” type of class – some swapped strips, we laughed about who had the ugliest, the oldest, the "What was I thinking?!?" We talked and demo’d different ways to do half square triangles – and sewed our brains out.

Here’s another shot of Cheryl on her hand crank Spartan:

She demo’d the use of triangulations for us and was working with larger squares that gave her 8 units per set. Very cool! And don’t you love her spool pin doily? :cD

Here’s the other photos showing what we got up to ----there is a lot of piecing in this quilt, even if the units are simple….the pinwheels and the 16 patches all finish at 6”.

		Patches & Pinwheels, Pride of the Prairie, IL 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Our workshops are being held at the fantastic Roberts Sewing Center, and I plan on doing a whole separate post about how wonderful this shop is – so be looking forward to it. Today’s Midnight Flight workshop is there too, I’ll get some more inside shots, and write that post to go live soon ---I really wish there was a shop like this near where I live!

Hoping all of your Saturdays are filled with some quilty time for you – have a super weekend, everyone!