One for the Done Column!

Last evening by dinner time I had ONE LAST SIDE to sew.

Just ONE seam left on my Hourglass Leader & Ender Challenge from last year.

My poor allergy affected eyes had been plaguing me all day.  Oh, ragweed and goldenrod season, you have brought me to my knees.

Matching points and pinning through blurry, sticky weepy eyes is no fun.  But after dinner, I was down here in the basement again, determined to do ONE LAST SEAM.

We did it!

And if there are any points that are glaringly off – I so don’t care.  I love the overall effect of this quilt top and I can’t wait to get it into the long arm machine this next week.

I’m dreaming of thread colors and just the right edge to edge design to add texture and whimsy as this puppy is far too busy for hand guided free motion quilting.  Most of my quilts don’t have any open space to show off fancy quilting as it is.  I’m okay with that. 

Hooray!!

But there was one last thing to do:

Stay stitch around the outside edge!

I tend to do this with quilts with pieced borders.  It minimizes stretching while quilting, and it keeps all of those bazillion seams from popping open during handling and the quilting process.  I just set my stitch length to the longest possible stitch, and stitch all the way around the outside edge of the quilt about 1/8’’ from the edge.  Any stitching will be covered by binding.

Give this a try on your next project that has piecing to the edge.  It really helps.

A post shared by Bonnie K Hunter (@Quiltville_bonnie) on Sep 10, 2017 at 5:50am PDT

I shared this video on my Instagram stories this morning, sorry for the cut off text! The sun was coming through the trees at such a beautiful angle.

And yet CNN is on and I’m keeping up with what is happening in Florida.  9 days until I am supposed to be in Fort Lauderdale, and now there is also Hurricane Jose following Irma.  This makes me so sad for Florida and anyone else in the path of these storms!

We also got out for a bit of a drive yesterday.

Downtown Mouth of Wilson, VA!

That used to be a farm supply.auto shop and gas station across the way.  Fields Motor Company built cars here in Mouth of Wilson from the 1920s.

The Mouth of Wilson hub of industry was right here at the junction of highways 16 and 58.  The main industry here now would be the ever present Christmas Tree farms as seen on the hills in the background. Christmas Tree farms are everywhere in this area.

Close up.

What was this like in its heyday?

Yesterday while out and about I talked to someone who said that when Christmas tree season gets ramped up around Thanksgiving time, this building is used for the assembly and making of Christmas wreaths that are shipped everywhere across the USA.  That gives me hope!  This building has purpose!  I would love to stop by when this is going on and meet my “neighbors” and see the process.  I wonder if they’d let me do a blog story on it?  I can smell the pine in my head already.

This junction of buildings is about 7 miles from where Quilt Villa is.

Across the street from the farm store.

This used to be the Fields General Store.  I’m not sure when it closed down, but it sits eerily vacant in its current state of age-worn disrepair.

Fields sign still visible under the eves.

Hope lives here!

This is the OLD post office.  A new one was built up the highway a bit – modern and beautiful in every way.  I would guess this one dates from about the 1950s, perhaps?  At any rate, The Blue Ridge Discovery Center is currently operating out of this renovated space.

The “NEW” post office, up the highway a few miles.

Mouth of Wilson is also the home of Oak hill Academy, a co-ed college prep boarding school.  

If you are driving through Mouth of Wilson – this is definitely one of those “Blink and you will miss it” kinds of places.  There is no Walmart, Dollar General, or full fledged Grocery store.  You will find a couple of mini mart type gas stations down both highways and they do carry milk, eggs, bread, snacks and other useful items. They also have sandwiches, burgers, and other hot food items, one that I know of has an  attached diner serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.

These are hardworking people trying to make a living and provide services in what has apparently become a modern day ghost town.

And this is why I love this place.  It is different from “Retail America” where all the stores have the same names in the same kind of strip malls and you can’t tell whether you are in Seattle, Cincinnati or Pittsburgh.

I love this corner of Virginia. I’d love to see it make a comeback.

Quiltville Quote of the Day!

Vintage grandmother's flower garden quilt shared during our Iowa workshops in early August.

This is something that has been flowing through my mind since I made the choice to postpone my Oregon visit.  This is what I’m thinking about as Hurricane Irma is hitting, soon to be followed by Jose.

What will I do?  I don’t know yet.  But I can’t lose myself while trying to please everyone else.

Have a lovely and SAFE Sunday, everyone.

It's about balance. And I am always trying to find the balance point in my day-to-day life.

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