Hi everyone,

how was your weekend? I hope nice and relaxing!

myself – haven’t had much time to relax, but it was nice! Lots of cooking and great family time – Saturday we had a farewell lunch for my daughter to see her off on one of her world travels for work (Nepal and Kenya this time), and then Sunday was our Easter – more cooking and good time with family and friends. Here is the result of family egg coloring (miraculously, my grown-up kids still indulge me in coming and doing this together – lucky me!)   :

In Serbia, we have to fun Easter traditions – one is to have an “egg fight” (for the lack of better translation) on Easter morning: everyone picks one colored egg, you hold it in your hand and the other person taps on top of your egg with their egg – one of them will crack! Then you both turn the other side and now it is your turn to tap – again, one of them will crack. If it is the same egg, person with the intact egg is a winner, if both eggs have one crack each, you go for a tie-breaker (with non-cracked sides of your eggs). Then the winner goes to do it with whoever was a winner from another pair of people doing it and so on, until there is one person who wins! 🙂 Everyone with cracked eggs is supposed to eat their own egg (part of brunch, or part of appetizers if it is a dinner), or sometimes I just collect them, keep them in the fridge for next day’s egg salad or something…Yeah – have quite a few in my fridge today!

The other tradition is to keep one of the colored eggs (traditionally should be the red one) in your china cabinet, ’till next Easter! It is called a “house protector” and it is believed to be for a good luck and blessings for the year. Yeah – it better be hard-boiled and NO CRACKS, otherwise…in following months you will wonder where is that bad smell coming from? LOL! But if it is a all good – it really keeps fine, just dries inside and you can “rattle” it next year! In our family, kids couldn’t decide which one to keep when they were little – so we made a new tradition: each person chooses one to keep! See that bunny egg-holder in my photo? Those are our “house protector” eggs for this year! Now I just have to keep my nose on alert for few weeks, ha, ha!

OK – what does all this have to do with quilting? Well, not much except I thought you would like to know about few interesting traditions and one more very important thing – I now have LOTS of leftover food – means no cooking for days – means: crunch-time to finish all the quilting and binding for show quilts!! YAY!!

Anyone with me? What is your TO DO list for the Show? Let me know please…please, let me know I am not the only “last-minute-diva” out here? 🙂

Ok, OK, that aside, lots of more important stuff to do: I am planing my set of Demos for the show – what would you like to see? Hey, I DO have several prepared, don’t panic, 🙂 – just wondering if there is interest out there for something specific?

For example, after seeing this blog post, I decided to  include this one too  – it is a variation on One-seam Flying Geese block that I showed in the last Show (and it was really well received), so this seems like a good idea – what do you think?

Of course -if anyone has a last minute great demo idea and wants to do it – just let me know by the end of this week!

Another question for all of you: do you think it would be good to have few “back to basics” demos at the show, for all the new quilters? Things like – mitering corners, good binding…etc.? I would include a good handout too. This is a beginners teacher in me talking…but let me know what you think!

I am really excited for our Show! So looking forward to all the fun times at BOTH hanging it all up and enjoying actual Show days! It really is such a highlight of everything our Guild does and stands for! I just read this blog post that made me stop and think…and feel so grateful for the great Guild we have! Apparently not everyone has this and we shouldn’t take it for granted! Your thoughts?

So, for all AMQG members – please come to volunteer and enjoy the Show, for all others – please come to visit, (info here!) – it will be great!

Wishing you all a wonderful week,

Marija