minneapolis – Sewtropolis

This past weekend I flew out to Minneapolis to spend a few days glamping with my friends. I won’t get into the fiasco with the missed flight because it all ended well and I was able to get to where I needed to be – just a few hours later.

I arrived in Minneapolis early Friday morning and had breakfast with son #2. We ended up going to Waffles and Black Coffee in the U-District. I highly recommend this place for the waffles! I ordered the Strawberry Shortcake Waffle and OMG it was so freaking good! I didn’t think I would be able to eat the whole thing – but I was wrong! I ate the WHOLE thing and didn’t regret a single morsel of it! Sorry no pictures of the waffle – but I took one of the Chai Lattee they gave me! How cute it that?

Glamping was in Lanesboro which is about 2 hours south of the Twin Cities. It’s a cute little town, rolls up during the winter, but during the summer there is people all over the place enjoying tubing on the Root River, biking along the trails, camping, shopping and even a theater group that is actually really good!

The picture below is of son #2, my BFF, her daughter and her mom and step-dad! When I talk about my Minnesota family – this is who I’m talking about!

One of the gals in our Glamping groups lent me a trailer for the weekend and let me just say – if I ever sell Athena, I might just consider getting a trailer with a pop-out! Wow! There was SO MUCH room – it was like staying in a mobile home! I love how she made it all homey for us! She even put out a scency candle and linens!

We drove back into Minneapolis early on Sunday so I could have lunch with both my boys before I had to catch my flight back to Seattle (I wasn’t about to miss another flight!). I won’t get into the slobbery cry session when I left or how much I miss them – if you are a mom – you get it! Even though they are men now, they will always be my boys.

I can’t yet show you the hand project I took with me to work on. It is a ‘commissioned’ piece and because it’s not finished I don’t want to ruin the surprise for anyone. I will say though that it is a crochet piece – and was super easy to tuck in my bag and work on during the flight to and from Minneapolis. I’m curious, if you are a quilter what type of projects to you bring to work on when you can’t bring a sewing machine?

It used to be that when I made a quilt I had a recipient in mind for the quilt. But after a few years most of my friends had at least one of my quilts, my kids had multiple quilts even my animals had their own quilts… and yet I just kept making quilts.

When I left Minneapolis I got rid of so much stuff, but what I couldn’t get rid of were a few of the more recent quilts that I had made with no recipient in mind. I did donate some of the smaller quilts to the children’s hospital, but some of the larger ones I just wasn’t ready to part with.

Now that I’m settled in Seattle I don’t quite have the room for all these quilts! So I decided it’s finally time to part with them. I’ve had a few quilts listed on my Etsy store for a while, but I recently listed these three quilts in the hopes of making more room in my closets:

This quilt was a Block of the Month sew along from the Minneapolis Modern Quilters. It was a mystery sew along, which means you are making blocks for 10 months with no idea where they will end up in the quilt. On the 11th month you get the layout pattern… Even though I do like this quilt, it is not my favorite and had I seen this pattern before I started I might have passed. But, here it is… and it’s for sale here!

Now, this quilt is one of my favorite quilts! I started this quilt during a workshop with Jacquie Gerhring from Tallgrass Prairie Studios! I love the colors, I loved working on it, I love the way it turned out…. I’m just very happy with this quilt, but now it’s just hanging in my closet… so it’s for sale here.

Of all three of these quilts – this one is definitely my favorite one! Before my move I had to sort through my stash and decide what fabrics were going to come with me and which ones were going to be left behind. During that sort, I realized I had a TON of little scraps of fabric that I just couldn’t part with… so I cut them into 2 1/2″ squares and sewed them together. I think this is one of my favorite quilts because it is a good representation of some of the fabrics I had in my store. But unfortunately I don’t have the wall space to display it, so it’s for sale here. I’m hoping someone will fall in love with this quilt as much as I have and the bed or wall space to let it shine!

Since moving to Seattle I finished four other quilts that where in various stages of being finished. Two are for my kids, but the other two will be listed as soon as it stops raining and I can get out and take pictures of them.

Happy Quilting!

Tag: minneapolis

Floating Down the River

Quilts Gotta Go