Hot Springs, Arkansas - The Spa City

Hot Springs, Arkansas, also known as the Spa City, is a great city! I don't visit there often but when I do I have a wonderful time! There's bathhouse row with the historic bathhouses and shopping. Also the natural hot springs in the area and fountains of warm water. The water is warm because it's cooled down from the average 143 degrees temp. I wouldn't do it justice telling you about the history of Hot Springs in my own words, so if you're interested in learning about the history of the hot springs, of the gangster era and baseballs legends' favorite place to play, then click here to read all about it!

My husbands birthday is during horse racing season and these past few years we've tried to go for his birthday. It's fun and the horses are absolutely beautiful! The weather was perfect the weekend after his birthday so we made our plans. He actually had to attend a conference for a half a day in Hot Springs on a Friday. I took off work, and rode to Hot Springs with him. While he attended the conference, I kept busy by visiting a quilt shop and an antique shop. We got to Hot Springs at 8:00am and I had until noon to shop. The races start at 1:30pm.

I visited Cathy's Quiltin' Square. Of course it was a lovely shop with the sweetest lady that worked there.

Here she is, working on this beautiful wedding ring quilt. She told me a client brought it in saying it had been stored in a box for years. It was quilted and just needed to have the binding attached. The fabric for the binding was in the storage box too! She had attached the binding and was busy clipping the curves in the scalloped edges.

Gorgeous! We spoke about the fabrics in the quilt. There were some feed sack fabrics and we suspected garment fabrics as well. I enjoyed talking with her.

This is the quilt design in the center of the wedding ring block. The top was machine stitched and hand quilted.

Next I stopped at an antique store not far from where my husband was attending the conference. It was huge with lots of booths.

I took photos of some quilts that were there. This butterfly quilt was so cute. It was all cotton except for the background teal-ish color blocks of the butterflies; that fabric was polyester.

I found a couple of signature or friendship quilts. I took a close up of the embroidery; sew pretty.

A Dresden Plate block with signatures in each wedge. Sew cool!

I hadn't seen this type of iron before. Is it a steam iron? But there were no holes in the bottom for the steam to escape, only those notches on the sides.

I left the antique shop and picked up my husband from the conference. We drove to the race track and had lunch there.

Lunch at Silks. I ate their signature corned beef sandwich and my husband ordered the hamburger.

We probably took about 5 or 7 selfies before we decided on one we liked! :-)

These guys on the tractors probably don't get the respect they deserve so I took a picture of them. After each race they are out there grating the track.

I'll close this post with an awesome photo of the horses running!

It was one of those priceless days of shopping, great weather, great day at the races and spending time with my husband.

Have a blessed day!
Gina

A couple of quilt shops in North West Arkansas

Hello and welcome! The first weekend in February, my sister, DeAnna and I were able to spend time together in North West Arkansas. We took advantage of the opportunity to visit a couple of quilt shops in the area.

We stopped at Sew in Heaven in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It's a very lovely shop and I didn't think to take photos while we were there!  Instead, I'll show you the patterns we purchased.

DeAnna bought this great Travel Essentials organizer that includes a pattern for a flat iron or curling iron.

I can't resist tote patterns and purchased Tina's Tech Tote Trio! Three bags in one! They had one made in the store which for me is pretty much guaranteed I'll buy the pattern!

We then drove to Lonesome Pine Quilts in Elkins, Arkansas. What a cute shop and they're only open on Friday and Saturday's!

DeAnna looking at their awesome selection of Batik fabrics!

Sew awesome with the truck in the store. I enjoy it when quilt shops have old vehicles, washtubs, old iron beds, etc in the store used to display quilts and fabric!

They have a lot of gorgeous wall inspiration throughout the store. They quilt for their clients so most of the quilts hanging in the store was made by their clients.

It was also DeAnn's birthday and I was happy to be able to spend the day with her!

Thanks for stopping by. Where have you been shopping lately?

Have a blessed day!
Gina

2016 Snow

We've had a relatively mild winter so far this season however we have had one beautiful snowfall.

I took a few cloudy photos and then again after the sun came out. I happened to take them standing in the same location, so I created these comparison photos.

Both the cloudy and the sunny photos are beautiful in their own right.

The different lighting brings out different elements in the photos.

My youngest son made Olaf. He is creative and is my outside the box thinker.

I think he did a great job recreating Olaf!

Thanks for stopping by! We are having more spring like temps and the daffodils are blooming. I hope the weather is beautiful where you are!

Daffodils that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty. -Shakespeare

Have a blessed day!
Gina

2015 Fall Sewing Retreat- Locust Grove, OK (Part 3)

Hello! Welcome and thanks for stopping by! This is the third and final post about our 3rd Annual Fall Sewing Retreat. I really needed to post about our 2015 Fall retreat before spring begins in 2016! In the first post I typed about how fortunate my Mom and sisters have been to get together three years in a row for a sewing retreat. In the second post, I shared photos of our shop hop. This post will show you the projects we sewed during the retreat.

This is our new retreat banner and what DeAnna was sewing in the first post.

The next two beautiful quilts were made by a friend and donated to my prayer quilt ministry. Our friend was out of town during the retreat but left them for me. She pieced the tops and quilted them and I attached the binding on both.

The sun was setting in this photo and I didn't get as good of a photo as I wanted. I'll have a better picture in another post when it's given to someone as a prayer quilt.

It's hard taking pictures of curtains that's not hanging on the wall, over a window. These are the curtains Simone made. She was serging the edges of the fabric in first post.

Simone also made this lampshade to coordinate with the curtains! How cool is that! She deconstructed the old shade and brought all the new components to the retreat!

Rhunell's beautiful umbrella quilt. She was quilting it on the longarm in the first post.

Rhunell also pieced this awesome fish wall hanging. Such precision to get the fish parts to line up!

This was the secret project you saw me working on in the first post. I was so excited to have won the 1958 calendar tea towels from eBay! My husband was born in 1958 and I'm making this for him.

We have a Sewing to Serve day during the retreat. This year everyone pieced a quilt top for the prayer quilt ministry. Each of my sisters pieced one, my mom quilted them on the long arm and I attached the binding. Pictured are two pieced tops, one quilted without the binding, one completed (quilted and bound). There were two of each design and I'm only showing one design of each here. They were all in different stages of completion.

I was running out of sunlight and these photos don't do justice to the beautiful quilts. I'll have better pictures in another post when they are given to someone as a prayer quilt.

This was a quilt DeAnna deemed her retreat quilt because she worked on it at each of the retreats. She ended up not loving it and donated to the prayer quilt ministry! Personally, I love it!

Spending a day making quilts for the prayer quilt ministry is such a blessing for me. I am blessed that my family and friends share my passion of covering the physically and spiritually ill in prayer quilts. I am blessed they donated their time and money to help contribute to the ministry. Instead of always being behind when a need arises, I'm ahead right now! Yay! because that seldom happens!

I hope you enjoyed the three part post about our fall retreat. I hope I've inspired you to plan a retreat with family and/or friends even if it's just for a day of sewing. If you missed Part 1 you can read about it here. If you missed Part 2 you can read about it here.

Have a blessed day!
Gina

2015 Fall Sewing Retreat- Locust Grove, OK (Part 2)

Hello and welcome back! Welcome to Part 2 of our 2015 Fall Sewing Retreat. Yikes! I needed to post about our 2015 Fall retreat before spring begins in 2016! In Part 1, I typed about how my sisters and Mom are fortunate to have been able to sync our schedule's three years in a row for a sewing retreat. The hostess rotation has changed each year and this year it was hosted by my sister DeAnna who recently moved from the Atlanta area to Locust Grove, Oklahoma. She has a large room above the garage that is her sewing studio. We had plenty of room for five sewing stations, a cutting station, pressing station and also her long arm and embroidery machine.

Part 1 showed you photos of our sewing days. This post is about our shop hop, which was also my Mom's birthday! Happy Birthday!

Our first stop was Rebecca's Quilt Shop in Kansas, Oklahoma.

Sew much inspiration on the walls and everywhere!

The next stop was The Cotton Cottage in Claremore, Oklahoma.

We ate a delicious lunch at the Hammett House in Claremore, Oklahoma!

A little Oklahoma history on a paper place mat.

While in Claremore we were on Route 66! Claremore is the home of Will Rogers.

Sweet Pea's Quilt Company in Sand Springs, Oklahoma was next.

Sew cute the way the store was decorated. They also had lots of inspiration in the store.

Moving on to Tulsa, Oklahoma to the Quilt Sampler!

More beautiful wall inspiration ...

and beautiful bolts of color on the shelves! Oh the eye candy!

Our last quilt shop stop was the Cotton Patch in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

We ended the fun shop hop day at Kilkenny's Irish Pub also in Tulsa.

This is how we helped the economy in the eastern Oklahoma area. Our purchases!

I hope you enjoyed hopping along with us! Be sure to come back to read Part 3 - the sewing projects we made at the retreat. If you missed Part 1 click here.

Have a blessed day!
Gina