Returned home refreshed......

....inspired and my soul has been nourished!  Every year I look forward to attending this retreat at Bryce Canyon.  Returning to Ruby's Inn every February is like attending a family reunion, and the family consists of the quilting friends who attend every year.  I missed a few of you not being there, and I'm hoping it was not for unfortunate reasons.  I had been waiting for this occasion, and when Leslie and I arrived on Monday, I just wanted to slow things down and savor the moments.  And even so the time just flew by.  When I last posted I said I would share more from my trip through Iowa, but I think I will delay that for a bit.  This retreat is so fresh on my mind I think I will share that first.

One of the delights of arriving early, which we do every year, is to have a day to stitch with two of our dear friends who also always come early.  Leslie and I shared a perfectly lovely day stitching with sisters Pat and Bonnie.  Pat was working on blocks from How Does Your Garden Grow.  Since it was one of my designs she wanted to share them with me.

These blocks are all wool on Diamond Textile backgrounds.

This beautiful young women is Janessa Ransom.  This is her version of Sweet and Simple.  Janessa is a Literature major and said that when she first saw this quilt which combined beautifully written words and quilting, she knew that she needed to make it.

"Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadow of Heaven blossomed the lovely stars, the forget - me - nots of the angels."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"To see the world in a grain of sand and Heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. 

-William Blake

"Never again would bird song be the same, And to do that to birds was why she came." -Robert Frost

"Every house where love abides and friendship is a guest, Is surely Home Sweet Home for there the heart can rest." 

Henry Van Dyke

"Glory be to God for dapples things - for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow, landscape plotted and pieced - field, fallow, and plough." - Gerald Manley Hopkins.

"One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."

- Hans Christian Anderson

:Our life is frittered away by detail.  Simplify, simplify, simplify."

-Henry David Thoreau

"He prayeth best, who loveth best, all things both great and small, for the dear God who loveth us, has made and loveth all."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Every visable thing in this world is put in charge of an angel."

-St. Augustine

"It matters little where a man may be at this moment, the point is whether he is growing." - George MacDonald

"I sigh that I kiss you, for I must own that I shall miss you when you have grown." - W.B. Yeats

These were Janessa's choice of quotes.  She was able to make it meaningful to her by using some of her favorites.  The colors she has used are sweet and cheerful.  She selected her twelve favorite blocks and chose a clever way to sash the blocks.  I just adore everything about her choices.  She is a gifted writer who will soon be publishing her first novel.

"The world is full of small ignorance's.  Thus we must do our best to ignore them and thereby keep them small."  This is a quote from the novel which I am reading entitled, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson.  Which by the way, I am enjoying.