A Wonderful Day

A group from my church is going on  mission trip this summer.  They'll be doing a construction project in New Orleans and will be gone for a week.  There are about twenty people participating.  I went on a construction trip with the church twenty years ago and know what a great opportunity it is, so I joined the fund raising committee.

I made a quilt for them to raffle and I believe the winning ticket will be drawn in about a month.  I wondered what else I could do to help.

Back near the end of 2010, I got an email from my friend Bonnie Hunter that she was going to be teaching a workshop in Middletown, Pennsylvania, and she wondered if Middletown was close enough to Near Philadelphia to make a visit possible.  Sure, I told her, and it would be great to see her.  We made plans for her to come on Friday and spend much of the weekend here before she headed home.

All at once, the light went on!

"Would you like to do a gig while you're here?" I asked.

I thought I could get some people together and Bonnie thought that sounded like fun.  I asked around and before I knew it, nearly thirty people were interested.  The name Bonnie Hunter has great appeal, it seems.  So we started to plan.

We decided on the Crumbs Workshop for our day together.  Bonnie would teach basic crumb blocks, wonky stars and hearts, and free style letters.  It sounded just great.

 

Our church holds a quilt day twice a year and we're pretty efficient at it.  Sometimes we have people bring parts of the and set up or clean up from the meal.  A cooperative effort.  It works well.

But I didn't want anyone to miss any of the wonderful day Bonnie had planned for us.

The light bulb went on again!

I contacted the mission trip group.  Knowing that one of the participants, Karla, has a magical way with food, I asked if they wanted to cater the breakfast and the lunch for the day.

They did.  And they were just splendid.

Some of us went down to the church last night to set up and we got there bright and early this morning to find that the kitchen angels had bagels and cream cheeses, fresh fruit, mini danish, hot and cold beverages all prepared for us.  They even poured the coffee!

Bonnie started us off with our basic crumb blocks, and it was exciting to learn how it all works, how the little blocks could come together.

Before lunch time, we'd learned not just the basic crumbs, but also wonky stars and pieced hearts.

We had worked up an appetite by the time we took a break.  And it was a good thing, because Karla and her team had prepared gourmet wraps, assorted terrific cold beverages, and an amazing cantaloupe and cucumber salad for us to enjoy.

We had some announcements, gave out some door prizes, and before very long at all we were picking up fresh fruit and cookies to take back to our places.

Because it was time to learn how to make letters.  And to string piece on pieces of telephone book pages.

We worked, we cut, we pressed, we trimmed.  We oooh'd and we aaaah'd and we laughed and we learned.

We did things that most of us had never attempted before.

And Bonnie made everything so easy.

She's a terrific teacher.  And we had terrific students. And a wonderful day.  Here's my project -- if I made three more blocks, I'll have enough for a small wall hanging.  To put in my office.

As a remembrance

of a Wonderful Day.