Letter from Vicki

Recently, we have received an email from Vicki Miles, an experienced American quilter, who was part of the Quilting group. With her permission I am publishing her letter. Before leaving Portugal her quilting buddies made for her, different sizes of blocks and now she is working to make a quilt. (Javhlan)

Ursula and ALL,

WOW, WOW, WOW! You guys have really worked [on charity quilts] and the result is fantastic. I am so disappointed that I could not work on these with all of you but sooooooooo proud of your accomplishments on the Charity quilts. I will be passing on this news to the ladies that donated and shipped the fabrics…they will be very happy.

I know that I have been very bad about keeping in touch and I apologize. It has been a very rough year since moving back. I don’t think Marty’s and my homesickness for Portugal has lessened at all. We don’t know how, but still want to return someday. The economy of course has made it harder to figure out, but we will do our best.

I understand that Angie will be leaving you soon…what a great loss for all of you (and her). I hope you have been able to find a new place to meet…she has been a great blessing to all of you, I know, providing the ‘CAVE’ for your meetings. Angie…tell me about your new home!!

We are finally feeling like we are getting settled into the house and the work on it is letting up. The builder still has a couple warranty issues to resolve in the next few weeks. We do love our house…it’s just in the wrong country!

I FINALLY got my head wrapped around a plan for using the absolutely WONDERFUL quilt blocks that you all made for me when I left Cascais. Vicki receiving her blocks at her leaving party.

Moda come out with a new fabric line a several months ago called “Portugal”. I bought a fat quarter set of the whole line and a little yardage of a couple of the prints…not knowing what I was going to do with it.
Then one day, it hit my very slow brain that these would be a great set to use with your blocks.
It is actually further along that this but I don’t have any more recent pictures. I am excited about it. I have had more than one ‘cry’ while working it though thinking of all of you. It will hang on the wall in my quilt studio when complete….more pictures then. It has been quite a puzzle putting it all together since no 2 blocks were the same size. (Hum…was that intentional just to make me work hard???)It is very good to be back with the kids and grandkids. Here’s our whole motley crew just a couple months ago…

Do you even believe that I have 9 grandkids? Getting everyone together AND then getting them go sit still for 5 seconds to take a picture is an accomplishment! When we get all of them to the house at once with 9 kids under 10 years of age, it is quite something to behold. It takes Marty and I a week to clean up and recuperate!
I hope that we can get over there sometime in the next year. I need to see all of you and soak in the sun.

Please write if you can… I’d love to hear about everything going on with each of you.

vmiles@vlminternational.com

Kisses,
Vicki