Quilting In The Dark!

I wasn’t sure this photo was going to turn out – The overhead light was out, the room was dimly lit, the daylight coming through the windows didn’t do much –
But you can see the quilters are cozy and stitching away in the Hen Den with the fire going.
What a cozy place!At any given time of the day – whenever I came through – there were four or five taking a break from machine work and just enjoying some hand stitching time with so much communal conversation going on. I love it!

Slow stitching calms my soul!

On the machine stitching side of things – we do have one top finish!

Tara Miller is the heart, head and hands behind The Quilt District. I love having them visit and see what her amazing quilt-laden mind has been up to.

Big Blocks, Big Win!

Legacy Wheel is a fast and dynamic finish with 24″ blocks! Gentle curves are easy to sew and create gorgeous lines and movement in your quilt — with very little effort. More bang for your buck, as they say!

This quilt looks amazing in modern, traditional, and reproduction fabrics.

There are acrylic templates for the curved pieces – currently out of stock, but more are coming soon.

For those attending Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, England in August –

Festival Workshops are HERE.

Festival Lecture sign up is HERE.

Another thing I’m super excited about – In September I’m taking a Craftours group on an adventure through Germany and Switzerland ending up at the big quilt show in Alsace, France at the same time that Tara is teaching there. We are making plans for a big meet up.

Carrefour tickets for the show in Alsace will be live in a few days. Link HERE.

Find out more about our Craftours Tour HERE. I’d love to have you join us! I’ve also added a tab for this tour to the top of the blog. You can also click the All My Tours tab to see where we will be heading in the future.

Today we are having our annual “Quilt Turning” Show & Share up in bedroom 5 with everyone gathered around and I can’t wait to see what everyone brings to the bed!

Meanwhile in the QPO Studio next door:

I’m pulling sky blue, dark chocolate,caramel and rust along with some creamy toasty neutrals for my next tile floor inspired quilt.

Unit making has begun!

I’m excited about this one – not sure if it will be completed by machine quilting, or if this will turn into the next hand quilting project, but for once I feel like I have jumped head of fall and will be ready for it. LOL!

Binding is happening slowly on my Abundance quilt.

I’ve turned a corner and am part way up the second side.

We finished the last episode of Adolescence on Netflix last night – I’m so grateful that Tracey left this little bit of her own experience with phones in classrooms. It’s a real problem.

The quilters and I stood around the kitchen island talking about it yesterday – We reminisced on how we didn’t have phones growing up, and that if parents needed to reach a student they would call the office, and the student would be asked to come to the office to take the call.

And then we veered into how different things are in the USA today where kids need phones in case of school shootings to call 911. And it just hit me in the pit of my stomach.

One comment was – “I know a teacher who installed those over the door shoe holder things and when the students come in to class they all put their phones in their designated pocket and they pick up their phone on the way out of class.”

This sounded like a good compromise –

After the episode concluded and Dave and I were discussing what we had just seen – we still have no answers. We fear for Casden. We feel out of our element as parenting goes because so many things have changed so rapidly.

I think the one thing we agreed on was to love your kids fiercely and be into everything they are doing, even their computer time behind closed doors because you never know what is pulling at them or what they are digging into.

Watching from the grandparent’s position presents a whole different issue.

And that’s all I know about real life situations with teens and pre-teens in school.

And I take a deep breath and look at what quilty good trouble I can get into today as an old lady.