Summary of my sister's visit to Poland

I am sure that most of you are aware that my twin sister, Rachael, came to Poland for just over a week and a half in the middle of August.  She and her husband came to help us and to get a chance to get away from their normal schedules there in Florida. I can't say that they came to take vacation, because that's not the case, though I am sure many people think that's what they were doing - taking a vacation.

So, what did we do? .

1. Chose fabrics, decided on a layout, cut out and she made the top, we sandwiched, and she quilted an exchange quilt for a lady in the states.  (She signed up to participate in this exchange in order to force herself to make a quilt.)  It was the music quilt - she is quite happy with the end result - as am I.  She outdid herself with that piano key border!  This actually took most of 3 days.

2. We set up and organized for our quilt give away on the 15th. She was the photographer. Then, we picked up and cleaned up afterwards.

3. We had one very long tourist day to The Wolf's Lair in northern Poland. On the way back, about 30 min. from home at a store like Lowe's, we picked out tile for the church bathroom that our husbands were working on.

The Wolf's Lair - Hitler's headquarters and planning area for his leaders here in Poland. - one of the buildings there - not his main bunker.

I saw these cutters at the 'local' store that was 30 min. away (Castorama) where we picked out the tiles for the bathroom.  While they aren't the quality of Olfa, neither are they the price.  These cost about $.2.75 for the cutter

I thought I'd try these blades as they are just about $1.75 for 5 blades.  Definitely worth trying and if I want to teach poorer people to do patchwork, I need to find affordable options for them.

4. Worked on quilt tops for charity - she went wild on this after seeing our give away and understanding more why 1. I need more guy/men quilts and 2. I want more dark quilts and 3. I want them to be quick and easy but attractive. She had brought over some panels or panel type fabrics (cheater quilt top fabrics) and so we added borders to over 20 of those.  Once her music quilt was finished, we felt "free" to do this.

These are the tops I'm ready to finish up as charity quilts. Four of these tops were donated as tops--The rest were panels or cheater sections that she brought from the QT headquarters and we added borders. One was a small middle of a quilt (the bright stars in the middle of the pictures) was pretty but too small - so Rachael added borders to it.  There are 38 here.

5. We took a planned day trip to a fabric wholesaler (I've not written that up yet - still planning to) - originally planned to visit 2 in 2 different cities- but the van broke down after the first one and we ended getting towed home -sat in the van 3 hours on the freeway while waiting for a tow truck while getting the runaround from a company. Finally got someone to come help us. We got home about 6:30 after leaving about 7 am.

6. Visited a museum commemoriating communist decor and lifestyle and made a short trip to Warsaw.

A typical apartment living room

Central Train Station

7. Went shopping to a couple different local stores.

A small store. You have to ask for everything you want!

My sis thought these were interesting looking donuts.

Have you ever seen Hello Kitty strawberry soda?

8. Went to our local "findings" store 2x.

9. Took lots of pictures of the church bathroom remodeling project the men were working on.

Before

AFter - not compoletely done but with my hsuband's knee surgery, it will have to do for now.

10. She had to keep tabs on her business in FL and fight jet lag.  We were barely over our own jet lag.

11. Oh yes...she picked out some greens/yellows and blues/aquas for me to make log cabin quilts. They are still right where she left them!  

And that's about it. I actually didn't do a lot of sewing while my sis was here. I helped her - I wanted to be at her disposal and didn't have a project I felt like breaking out. So, we worked on charity quilt tops together and I tried to keep the meals going and drive us places if we needed to run get something (not sure if she would want to drive a stick shift though she said she drove one early in their marriage.)

The wonderful thing is this time she didn't have to fold or organize fabric.  

So there you go - in a nutshell, or rather, one blog post -- what we did while my sis was here!

Have a great day!

Make sure you check out the fabrics my sis has for you! There is surely something you can use!