Today was a wonderful day for me.  I got to spend almost the whole day with the Trillium Quilt Guild, and this evening I had a surprise visit.  More on that later.

We had our regular quilt guild meeting this morning with a guest speaker.

Joan Pagel came to teach us about binding quilts. This has always been one of the hardest parts for me.

Binding a circle

Binding inside a rounded corner

Binding inside a square corner

Binding around points and curves

Perfect mitered corners

After the meeting, a number of us stayed and had lunch before spending the afternoon working on quilts for a family who will soon be moving into a Habitat for Humanity house.

The cutters (The woman on the right recently stopped wearing head coverings after her hair has started growing out again following chemo treatments.)

The sewers (I was a sewer as well, but obviously at this moment, I was the photographer.)

The ironers

One of the designers

The first of three quilts we finished putting together today.

The family we are making the quilts for are two parents, an adult daughter who has moved back home, a fourteen-year-old boy, a thirteen-year-old girl who has cerebral palsy, and a younger girl.  The guild had originally asked members to make enough blocks for a quilt for the parents, but so many blocks were brought in that they had enough to make for the girl with cerebral palsy and the adult daughter.  Another woman volunteered to make a quilt for the boy, and I have been working on a quilt that the younger girl can have.

I got home and was sorting through my pictures for the day waiting for Mark to come home when there was a knock at our door to the garage, the one we always use that no stranger would know to knock at.  I looked up and there was Merih, and when I opened the door, Kader came around the corner too.  I haven’t seen much of either of them lately.  Someone at Merih’s workplace was fired recently so he has been working a lot.  Kader just got a second job.  It was wonderful to see them!

I had asked Kader a couple of weeks ago if she can paint a border on our bathroom wall when it is finished, so she asked when I wanted her to do that.  I said, we have to have walls first!

Mark has finally gotten back to work on it. He put boxes under the ceiling over the tub and pulled down the ceiling panel that was there before. Some of the attic insulation fell into the boxes, but most of it stayed up where we want it. He is beginning to even out the ceiling for us to paint. This is where the soffit was before, so the ceiling will be higher now.

Merih came in and looked at the bathroom and said that because Mark helped him with his car, he will help Mark with the bathroom.  Things are beginning to slow down for him at work since Wisconsin schools are back in session and there are not as many tourists.  His offer of help was gratefully accepted!

Then, because he had promised to take us out to dinner for fixing his car, he and Kader took us out and bought us dinner and ice cream at the Ice Cream Factory.  Afterward, they came back to our house and Kader taught me how to make Turkish coffee.  She gave me a package of Turkish coffee and a bar of Turkish chocolate and said that in Turkey, they eat chocolate with their coffee.  She also brought me a cezve (pronounced Jes-VAY) or a Turkish coffee pot.

Cezve

When she was showing me how to make Turkish coffee, she said that each time it begins to bubble on the surface, you dip the bubbles out with a small spoon into your cup (preferably a very small cup).  Merih told me that when a young man comes to ask his girlfriend’s father if he will consent to let him marry her, he brings his parents with him.  The two families sit to talk about it while the young woman makes and serves Turkish coffee for them all.  He said that every Turkish girl is trained how to do this.  I have never liked coffee, but I politely accepted a cup and sipped it.  I didn’t have any sugar in the house or she would have put some of that in first.  Mark said it was more bitter than American coffee.  We both found that having some of the Turkish chocolate improved the taste of the coffee.  I was touched that they taught us this bit of their culture.

As they were getting ready to go home, Kader told me she will be sad to go back to Turkey at the end of this season.  She is looking forward to seeing her family there, but she said that Mark and I are her family here and she will miss us.  I love that girl!  We love them both.