'True Love Quilting Club' makes quilts sexy

I was not expecting such a steamy book when I picked up "The True Love Quilting Club" off of my grandmother's shelf. But once I started the book, I couldn't put it down until I finished it.

While there is a decent amount of quilting in this book, it is primarily a love story, and a sexy one at that. Some of the scenes were so hot, they made me blush.

The story follows Trixie Lynn Parks, who has changed her name to Emma, and has found herself back in Twilight, Texas, to perform in a community play after she kneed a Broadway producer in the family jewels when he propositioned her with an inappropriate deal to jump start her career. 

Thinking her acting career, which had never amounted to much anyway, was effectively over, she runs into her high school sweetheart, Sam Cheek, who is recovering from the death of his wife and raising her son who hasn't spoken in a year.

The courtship of Sam and Emma is just as sweet as it is sexy. Author Lori Wilde develops full characters that you find yourself rooting for. And while it takes 173 pages for them to kiss, the scene is so hot, that it's worth the wait. 

Besides the romance, the book features a 30-year-old learning to quilt, a group of women who support each other through difficult times and celebrate the good ones, honoring veterans with war memorial quilts and a very touching scene that involves a memory quilt. 

So while this book at its heart, is a romance novel, hopefully it also will teach women that quilting is both an art and a form of therapy not just for those who make the quilts, but also for the recipients.

Virtual shop hop: Quilting Divas in Green Bay, Wisconsion

 

One of my favorite things to do on vacation is visit quilt shops. I love seeing what's popular in other areas of the country.

Last week I found Quilting Divas Sewing Boutique in Green Bay, Wis., an amazing shop were sassy meets quilting. Take the store's mascot for example, a life-sized stick figure quilter made out of sewing notions. Yes, those are pin cushions for breasts.

The store has a wide variety of fabric, including landscape prints that I've always heard about, but have never seen. The bolts are laid out nicely according to collection with space to stand back and see how the collection would work together in a quilt. You know, as opposed to the quilt shop that packs so much fabric into a small shop with low ceilings that you feel like you might suffocate.

The shop, which opened last fall, features a new quilting diva each month in the form of a trunk show. This month the shop owner's parents Bernice and Eugene Hermsen are the honorary shop diva and divo. 

They've made some impressive quilts for their seven children, 12 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, including a cathedral window and a grandmother's flower garden. Both patterns must be entirely hand pieced and often remain unfinished.

I highly recommend checking out Quilting Divas the next time you're in Green Bay.

On the border

I finished piecing the top of my sister's signature quilt from her wedding. I think it needs a border. I've got an idea about what I want to do, but would welcome suggestions. I have a lot of the white fabric left, a little of the light pink and not much of the dark pink.

Virtual shop hop: Willow Creek in Kalona, Iowa

If you find yourself in Kalona, Iowa, you must visit Willow Creek Quilting and Gifts.

This shop has hundreds of bolts of fabric that are all neatly organized so that shoppers won't get overwhelmed. The shop has the largest supply of Civil War and 1930 reproduction prints that I've ever seen in one location.



There also is an entire room dedicated to baby quilts. And if modern fabric is your style, they've got that too, although most of the prints have a country feel.


Be sure to check out their supply of kits and vast collection of wool fabrics. It also is the only place I've been able to find a pair of Machinger quilting gloves, and I've been searching since last Christmas when the dog chewed a finger off of mine.

Kalona quilts continued

The Kalona Historical Village put together an exhibit just for the Iowa Illinois Quilt Study Group that featured quilts with a family story. The quilts are absolutely remarkable and I'll them speak for themselves.