What? I’m a day late, you say? Didn’t you hear. I enjoyed myself so much on Mother’s Day, I have declared it is rolling over through Monday this year.

Yesterday, I was treated to breakfast at the cabin– French Toast, at my request. (This is an early morning picture of the cabin a few weeks ago, but I just needed an excuse to use it!)

I was surprised by a beautiful fat quarter bundle of Lori Holt’s Hometown fabric and a hummingbird feeder.

Then, also at my request, the kids and Mr. SFO disappeared for the rest of the day, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself finishing up the leaf quilt on the longarm, hour after hour.

So here it is– I tried to take a picture of it with the sunrise flooding through the window, but it’s a gloomy as all get out this morning, so it’s hard to see my swirls.

Here’s a closeup.

I discovered very early in the process my swirls weren’t showing up that well on the busy fabric, so I ditched my idea of making different types of swirls in different areas and just did them overall. Now, I would have sworn when I was doing them they were as smooth as silk, but this morning they look a bit, shall we say, “Quirky.”

It does look less like wind than little raindrops puttering on a sidewalk, but that is fine with me since my original inspiration was leaves on the ground, not leaves flying through the air. A friend convinced me that any original quilting you do yourself is better art than sending out for edge to edge. But what is she saying now? 🙂

So what else to say? I really enjoyed every minute of this and don’t get me wrong I love it– that being said, I have a lot to learn about the longarm, for sure. It turns out, it is already in the judged division at the Maine Quilt Show by virtue of me paying a $25 entry fee soon enough to get in. (This I discovered from my LQS, Thank You!) The best part of being in the Judged Division is that I will get feedback from the judges, I am told. I’m looking forward to that.

I am just so excited to meet my goal of having a piece in the show, I went ahead and entered my crab piece, “Points West. The deadline for entry is May 15th, and they only accept 100 quilts, so partly I just wanted to see if the judged division was closed out– and it is not. So the other choice is Display Division– that must be huge since it’s a large show. Who are all these gracious people who just want to show their beautiful quilts and aren’t in the slightest interested in a judge’s opinion or the glory of a ribbon? I want to meet them!

New Acquisitions.
In view of my fabric diet I’m supposed to be on, it’s a wonder I have any new acquisitions at all to speak of– let alone give them an entire heading! But here we go. I know you understand. We must support our Local Quilt Shops and mine conveniently has this area right up front and center where I find everything I didn’t know I needed. Like this!

My son-in-law is a mushroom fan and a forest in general fan, so this is perfect for him. His birthday is in July. Haha! As if.

Then I bought this red Kim Diehl print for the piping on my leaf quilt. I’m going to give the binding a bit of an upgrade, in case I embarrass myself with my quirky swirls.

And I bought a bag pattern! There are lots of bag making fans out there, I bet. I have never made one. So this one looks like– you guessed it– a little baby bag! I could just see tucking a couple of diapers in there and an extra nuk, instead of these huge bags you usually see everywhere. It was a little pricey, but then I realized it comes with a little pink zipper. I have been collecting some baby prints, but there’s honestly no time in the schedule for this right now. I’d put it slightly more likely to get made this summer than Evan’s mushroom quilt. Like instead of 0% chance, 0.1%.

Then– I have a friend. A truly generous, quilty friend. She, like me, is trying to downsize , but unlike me, she’s succeeding. I mentioned that Crabapple Hill Company is retired. Do you know them– they have all those cute hand embroidered and crayoned quilts. Look what she gave me! This is the most famous pattern you may have seen a few years back.

Then, we have flowers– this is honestly the one I would make first, if I had any business starting something new right now.

And this friend and I– we both love Halloween.

One of them even has all the floss– isn’t it delicious!

Then there were packs and packs of other embroidered things Santas, snowmen, redwork… she’s been quilting for many, many years, so some of these kits are truly vintage. I checked for dates on things and some go back to 1999. Do you have any of these? I’ve never seen them.

How could I say no?

Add this to other huge bags I’ve been a recipient of— honestly, the generosity just wants to make me cry. I have fantastic friends– it’s one reason I haven’t really reached out to a new guild here. And with a granddaughter to visit in my old haunts, you can bet I’ll be seeing even more of them. xox.

Finally, it’s handstitching! The Holly Horse has had tremendous progress, and it is just gorgeous. I got tired of the neutral horse colors and kind of branched out everywhere. This is the kind of progress that it only made by completely banishing my iPad at night! Here is where I was last week:

And here we are today.

This kit is the first one I’ve had with a “Color Organizer.” It’s from 2007, and I think that was a big innovation at the time– before you had to sort yourself, based on a color description and number of strands. The organizer is working really well for me, except there is no place to put your leftover floss. I’m trying to pick areas that will fully use up a 18” piece and so far, there haven’t been extra pieces. I might punch circles in the top side of the cardboard, opposite from circles below. So you can seen it’s already starting to look like hell. At some point, I’ll take a few minutes to re-organize. 🙂

My DMC Diamant gold floss is on the way in both light and dark gold, because I couldn’t’ decide– thank you to the person who tipped me off in the comments last time. I also ordered a darker green to replace one of the other colors. I’ve been assured my cataracts are not yet a problem, but for the life of me, I cannot see the difference between these two colors.

If you have one of these vintage cross stitch kits waiting to be finished, by all means dig it out! You don’t see many new designers working with the intricate blending and range of colors that you see in some of the them– they are incredible. I did find this one at Herrschner’s that my son would love. Oops! Guess this should have been in my New Acquisitions section above!

I’ve said this before– you can snag these vintage stockings on eBay– I have my eye on a gardener’s one for my daughter-in-law, and there’s an old “Woodland Friends” stocking perfect for my son-in-law. If I keep acting out on all these things, I am going to be busy for a very long time!

This blog is good for one thing– at the end of it, I always feel like I better say goodbye and get busy! And that is just what I intend to do. All the best for your week!

Xox
Carol