Pin It Weekly #296

10 pins. No words.

Build a Quilt Show, Or a Bad Monday

First, you'll need lots of hands. You also need one really patient, hard-working husband. The kind who doesn't quit. Or take a break. Or know when to go home. The kind who can push past his own limits and drag you along. 

And you need friends who will do just about anything, show up on time, and work hard doing things they may not have done before--like work power tools. 

Credit for all photos goes to Helen Mire

Next, you need to have a good plan. And be able to delegate. Then be able to ditch every. single. bit. Of all of it. No, that, too. Whatever that is. Switch to Plan B. Then jump on Plan C. Then forget the plans and wing it. Or let said husband take over. He will anyway, why didn't you just let him loose? (Okay, so it wasn't really like that.)

No one is angry here. This photo of Mrs. Stress, who
is married to Mr. Dilemna, quite often looks just like this.

Finally, go with the one thing you really didn't want to do and tweak it along the way. Have a meltdown, throw a hissy-fit (that's a Southern b-word, btw) and be diplomatic. ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

Now breath. It's going to be fine. Here's how Day 1 went down: Ten of our guild sisters turned up and waited patiently while these guys unloaded the trailer and moved wood into staging areas.

Then the ladies put cup hooks onto the wide sides of the 2x4s according to my plans. In the meantime, Richard measured the space only to discover that the info I'd been given was off. Way off. The room was ten feet shorter and six feet narrower. Talk about a difference. Let's not go into how that happened. 

So then I had to scurry around trying to reconfigure the floor plan. In the end I had to have five straight, parallel rows of 2x4s to hang quilts. The mathematics that I'd spent hours on in an effort to streamline the work was ditched. "Just put the hooks every 15 inches." And in less than 30 minutes every bit of work I'd done had been reconfigured into the one setup I'd been trying to avoid. It may work better this way, or not. I have moved on.

We hauled wood, screwed in hooks, built walls, reinforced walls, set up bases, then moved bases, and managed to leave at five o'clock with the hanging system in place. And that was Monday. 

Build a Quilt Show Series:

Getting Started, or A Bad Monday

The People Who Make It Happen

 Build a Hanging System

Procure Your Judges

Part 2 -- South Louisiana jaunt

On Tuesday Richard and I drove south to a couple of small towns. The plan was to see a bit of the landscape, perhaps a little culture, and the Vatican exhibit at St. Joseph's in Rayne. 

In Crowley, home of the rice festival, we saw this fabrication shop where swamp boats are made. We had to pull over and get a few pictures. How my husband knows about this sort of thing always amazes me, but he was able to answer all of my silly questions. 

So the way these things work is that the boat sits on top of the rice field, or crawfish pond or marsh, wherever. The big paddle wheel on the back "floats" on the bottom and pushes the boat. The hydraulic arm is long so that it can sink deeply or just roll along on top of the swampy ground, and the driver can adjust the depth as needed.

Farmers and fishermen can purchase boats in different widths, lengths, and paddle wheels, depending on their individual needs. Interesting, no? Notice the tarp on the top? That's because it's hot in Louisiana. The tarps provide some shade for the human and for the product on board. That question I did not need to ask.

As we drove through Crowley, I took a few pictures of the downtown area. We saw some beautiful old homes, but the rain and time didn't allow for pictures. Have you noticed the rain splattered windshield?

Isn't this a fabulous picture? Yes, those specks are
raindrops, but I still like it. The cross makes it perfect.

And on the way home we were enjoying the beautiful sunset when Richard realized that I was taking pictures of the sun setting from the town of Sunset. Cute, no? 

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: Use Your Words

Use Your Words. How many times have you said or heard that phrase? I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Kaja and Ann's Ad Hoc Improv Quilts, which led me to Audrey's Quilty Folk, which reminded me that I have yet to use a particular stack of fabric. 

A stack of fabric that took a while to collect. A stack of fabric with words. Now, I'm an English teacher. Words have been a big part of my life--be it teaching how to use them, how to write them, how to read them or to understand them. Words are important to me.

Hmm, maybe it's time to use my words. My word fabric. But not today. Today, and all of this week, I'm working on our guild quilt show. It's less than a week away! So there's lots of work to do. I'll take pictures and use my words. In the meantime, here's an SQI from 2015 that is about using your words. I hope you enjoy.

And where there's inspiration....there must be quilts!

Thanks for stopping by.

Cotton Quilters' September meeting (in pictures)

I can't believe that the month is almost over and I still haven't mentioned the Cotton Quilters meeting. Here are a few pictures, but I suppose that there's little to tell because we spent our time discussing the upcoming show. At this point in time, that's only a week away!

Mermantau, Crowley, and Rayne...a South Louisiana jaunt

I got a text from Meggan telling me about the special exhibit this week at St. Joseph's in Rayne. It looked interesting, so our  first open day (Tuesday), Richard and I jumped in the truck. About the same time, Rory called to say there's a little place we might want to check out. He hadn't been, but still...

So off we went in hopes of an adventure. What we got was a downpour. The interesting little place was a dud, but we saw lots of rice fields, several rice mills, and a couple of towns that we would visit again. 

Mermentau River

Not much larger than Evergreen, Mermentau is a little town on the Mermentau River. The river looks wide here, and it is, but it spills into Lake Arthur where it becomes much bigger as it travels into Grand Lake and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. 

One of many rice fields between Mermentau and Crowley

The area between Mermentau and Crowley is part of the Grand Chenier prairie, rich soil perfect for growing rice, crawfish, and sugar cane. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service notes, "The Chenier Plain is a popular destination for nature watchers, anglers and hunters, who come from around the world....With its location at the terminus of the Central and Mississippi Flyways, coastal wetlands in this focal area are extremely important for waterfowl and...up to 5.8 million ducks. The area also has productive estuaries, nearby forests and grasslands, and expansive tidal wetland systems. The coastal waters...contribute substantially to the nation’s commercial fishery landings, particularly for shrimp, blue crab, oysters and Gulf menhaden operations."

Top: Riviana rice mill; Bottom: Supreme Rice
Mill in operation (note the train cars waiting to be loaded)

From Crowley we moseyed east to Rayne along Hwy. 90 for the original reason of the trip: The Eucharistic Miracles of the World exhibit.  It was set up to explain each miracle independently. Placards give an overview, details, and photos of monstrances and tabernacles, artwork,  churches and saints. 

And that rounds up our little jaunt. There were other interesting finds along the way, but this post is plenty long already. 
Thanks for stopping by.