Those of you who looked at my Events Calendar recently may have noticed that I recently traveled to the University of Kentucky to teach a program for their Cooperative Extension Program.

Lately, my job has had me doing a lot of traveling, and I realized, as I was getting ready to drive by the Gateway Arch in St. Louis yet again, that I had passed the Arch 14 times (7 times leaving, and 7 returning) in the past year without ever stopping! Now, that’s a shame – to be that close to such a great landmark so many times and not stop at least once. So, deciding there is no time like the present, my husband and I took a small detour before continuing onward.

It is awesome, and I do mean that in the old-fashioned definition of awe inspiring. The Arch is both 630 feet wide and tall, deflects 18″ in a 150 mph wind, has 1,076 steps in the stairway (thank goodness the stairs are for emergency use only), and the list goes on. But those are the technical statistics. There are exhibits and pictures that take you back in time, when riverboats were king of the rivers, and the Westward Expansion was new and exciting. It really reminds us what it took to make this great country of ours that so many can take for granted today.

If you look closely, you can see my hair in the left side of the picture here…. This was taken at the top of the arch, inside of course!

Once we got to the top, the observation deck allowed us to look out at some incredible views (even if leaning over like this was a bit uncomfortable).

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View from the top!

After this very stop to stretch our legs, the trip to the University of Kentucky continued. There were 181 women who attended the Expo, titled “It’s Sew Fine: For Home and Family”. I taught two of the seventeen classes that were offered at the expo, and I think it’s fair to say that almost everyone had a great time.

The first day (Tuesday), I taught a class on making fabric yo-yos. The one thing that all the participants had in common, was remembering making their yo-yos ‘the hard way’ previously. I was teaching how to use the clover yo-yo maker, and they loved it. Almost everyone realized they were going to have to get more than one size and shape of yo-yo maker to have for future use!

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Long-term readers of this blog will remember the fun we had with yo-yos here a while back. If you haven’t heard of the great Yo-Yo makers from Clover, check out my yo-yo tagged posts.

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Participants brought finished projects ready to embellish,  and then we just focused on the fun part – dressing it up!

Want to know what else I was up to in Kentucky? Well, here’s a hint… this picture is a picture of fabrics cut for a quilt block I was teaching… tune in tomorrow!

Sheila Reinke, Heart of Sewing
Sheila