Quilting & Ponies!

Friday with Debbie's Bitter Bees was a full to the brim, over the top day filled with quilting fun, loud laughter - and even an afternoon hike up to Grayson Highlands in search of wild ponies.

We were gifted with a beautiful spring day with temps reaching 70f - how could we NOT go out for a bit of exploring?

But first things first - the second day of our Spanish Rose workshop had us digging into some fun string piecing for the outer border.

Busy cutting tables, and busier ladies!

Chain sewing little units!

I love the opportunity to get folks excited about the opportunities that strings give us - in this case, in order to have enough blocks to work with during our session, I encouraged short chains so that we could see some block completions, instead of long chains of half-done blocks.

Giving yourself a 1/4'' margin of fabric beyond your foundation paper also gives you a buffer zone because "Shift Happens." We can them use the ruler to also shift over and miss where we fell short, or center something that didn't sew in quite right - or make up for any corner seam that was just too close to the corner and would end up in the next seam allowance.

String piecing is messy! Embrace it!

Sharing fabric scraps with table partners adds to the variety!

After lunch - 10 of us up to the park.

It took two cars!

Evidently Friday was brought to us by the color PINK, and I didn't get the memo. LOL!

What a fun group of ladies!

And what did we see?

Click to Play:

Awesome day!

And these were the 4 O-H-I-O  girls from behind.

The amazing moment when a curious pony walked right out of the brush and up to give a sniff.

This day will be remembered for a long time to come!

Returning to chat with the few that didn't go -

We found them enjoying the back porch in the afternoon.

(And Tula watching on.)

Things are starting to green up a bit.  

And a glimpse of the old woolen mill beyond the porch.

Between the workshop morning and the hiking afternoon I was only able to add a few more rows to the Abundance mothership.

There is desire to do another walk closer to the inn this afternoon after lunch (And this morning's workshop round up) so I'm not seeing this grow rapidly - but everything gets done, one row at a time, right?

And with that - guess what happens NOW?

It's time to draw for our lucky winners! We had 5207 entries!

Who is entry 556?

Sherri Satterwhite!

And entry 3403 is:

Paula Preti!

Congrats, ladies!  Please check your email inboxes for an email from me containing your Waterford PDF pattern.

Reply to that email with your mailing address and I'll have the folks at  Cotton to Quilts get your fabric rolls out to you.

My Waterford PDF pattern is now available in the Quiltville Store with an automatic 25% introductory discount good through this coming MONDAY 3/31/25.

It was inspired by a tile floor I photographed on my last trip to Ireland, when we took our Craftours group to the Waterford Crystal showroom in Waterford.

Waterford measures 80'' X 80'', but is easily made smaller or larger just by changing the number of blocks.

What's up for your Saturday?

I'm going to grab a bit of breakfast and head on over - today's last installment of our Spanish Rose workshop includes a bunch of half-square triangles featuring my Essential Triangle Tool and many helps, hints and tricks of working with four-patches for borders.

Quiltville Quote of the Day -

At least some things are consistent! 


Have a great weekend, everyone!