Reunions and gifts

While I am sorting through my pictures of the superduper Birmingham Festival of Quilts earlier this month I thought I’d catch up with a few pictures on this blog.

Earlier this summer Melissa and her family visited our house for a meal, to make sure they could find our house we hung the American flag from our house.

Melissa runs the very successful Polkadot Chair blog and is a Riley Blake designer, we met before when she, her husband and eldest daughter visited my hometown The Hague a few years ago, this now was a great opportunity to meet the rest of the family.

It was a lovely evening, like last time way too short, so many things to talk about so I do hope we can do this again some time. Her husband Jeff spent two years in The Netherlands in the past and we were amazed at his language skills, he still speaks Dutch! Apparantly he has regular Dutch speaking days back home… admirable! 

Melissa came bearing many gifts, which of course was a lovely surprise and so kind of her. I especially love the fabrics, from her own lines, I had been looking for them over here, but had not been able to find them (yet), so thank you so much Melissa, I love them!

And another wonderful gift came my way…. A few weeks ago I visited the Festival of Quilts with my friend Emma, which was also a lovely reunion since we had not seen each other for a long time. Again I was spoiled with gifts. She brought me one very special gift… a wooden bobbin holder made by her son Nathan. This summer he has been doing woodwork with his granddad, isn’t that special? Such wonderful memories must have been made. This is the first bobbin holder he made and he asked his mum to give it to me, isn’t that just the sweetest? I am really touched, so say the least. 

It is beautiful, very handy and I use it constantly as it takes pride of place on the dining table where I do most of my quilt work.
The fun little gnome you see in the background is the pincushion that Emma gave me, he makes me smile. Together with the bobbin holder they are great helpers with my quilt work and lovely reminders of people I do miss a lot.

Speaking of quilting…. this one got sandwiched!

Next blogpost I will show you some of the things Emma and I saw at the Festival of Quilts, promise.

Phyllis