First 2026 Over The Rail!

Who would guess a week ago we were still plowing snow hoping to clear the drive and the parking lot before these lovely ladies showed up for retreat?

Some snow still remains in places where the "sun don't shine!" but little by little things are looking up.

(Yeah, don't tell me about this next incoming weekend - winter may have its last hurrah yet.)

We were a smaller group, but mighty and they got a lot done!

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On Valentine's Weekend!

I got to spend Valentine's Weekend with the February Quiltvillians!

The last retreat I was here for was in October just before heading out to Vancouver, Washington in the aftermath of Jason's surgery.  Then on to my Dad's in Arizona. I missed the only November retreat we schedule due to the looming holiday season.

And December? I missed that one too as I was in Germany and Austria.

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Lupine & Laughter PDF Pattern Gift-Away!

Happy Valentin'es Day!
I thought there would be no better day to kick off the newly re-written PDF pattern booklet of Lupine & Laughter than today. And yes, there is a Gift-Away!
All of the parts have been unscrambled and presented in a coherent compilation with all of the helps, hints, tips and tricks included in one volume.
I have loved sharing our yearly Quiltville Winter Mystery with you, every step along the way.

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Borders, Borders, Borders!

Can you see what is happening here?

If it's not perfectly clear, I've got the one big long border length I made face down on the machine bed and I am stay-stitching down both sides of the border length to anchor all of those seams and also preventing any stretch.

Piano key borders are like accordions...they really do have a lot of give, so stitching down either side just shy of 1/4'' from the edge will help with all of that.

And doing it back-side-up allows me to manage which way the seams need to go so they don't go flipping on the feed dogs.

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More To The Story -

After Hazel Grey had been hanging around for several days - we noticed something else.

There were two littles coming out from under the old general store - 

OH NO!

How many more were there? 

Hence the nightmares of invading cat colonies started disrupting my sleep.

Were they born under the general store? Or was Hazel dumped with these babies by someone who didn't want them?

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How Could I Not?

She came meowing. To the backdoor of the QPO studio.

I opened the door, asked her what she wanted, and she walked right in like she owned the place.

I sat in my chair, she jumped into my lap and immediately started making biscuits.

I said "Okay, then." and I grabbed Tula's brush and started to brush her fur and the purring got louder.

She head bumps.  She rubs.  She "makes muffins" as my son used to call it when he was little because he couldn't remember the word "biscuits."

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Things Are Ramping Up!

This is the snow & ice curtain hanging off of the side porch at Quiltville Inn.
The ice is SO THICK!
I took this photo before son Jeff grabbed a porch chair and used it to break the ice off where it was hanging below the gutters.
We protected the top of the Generac by placing a palette on top of it to divert any falling ice and protect it from any direct hits.

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A Place For Every Scrap!

As I relished in my sewing time in the basement studio over the weekend, I was also crossing my fingers and my toes that this would be the LAST of the iced-in-snowed-in weekends we would have with this winter.

Enough is enough. Retreats start this week.

We've got to have some sunshine and a bit of warmth to melt the snow pack that is still covering the yard and the back parking lot at the inn.

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Bursts of Color!

We took a walk through Lowes yesterday after my appointment with the dermatologist.

No matter how much snow there is outside I saw the hope of incoming spring making an appearance around every corner.

Blooming orchids!

Bags of potting soil, bird feeders, they've even put the lawn mowers out front.

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Plowing The Snowcrete!

I took this photo of Hubster Dave on his big red tractor yesterday afternoon.

We'd already been to the inn and back - I had to put an industrial heater to blow hot air at the compressor for the sewing room split unit.  It was frozen up and encased in ice - all of which had slid off the roof and surrounded the unit.

This spring a little shelter thing will be made to keep falling snow off the unit!

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What's Sewing On?!

Questions, questions and more questions!

I've received more comments to please share what those block parts I kitted up were going to turn into.

SOMETHING SIMPLE!

I can't resist a simple sawtooth star, and they work up so wonderfully in scraps!

The one thing I'm not used to is having one common fabric as the background and I'm having a hard time staying focused.

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Cats of Marrakech! (And Virginia!)

Wasn't there a movie somewhere where the cats were space aliens, and more intelligent than humans and they were plotting to rule the world?
Or was that just my imagination?
I remember while visiting Egypt that the cats were everywhere and revered.  Fed.  Vaccinated. Taken care of by EVERYONE.
I saw the same thing happening in Marrakech.
And this cat loving mama enjoyed every one I saw.  From Marketplace to Mosque - the world is being run by cats.

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Still So Much Snow!

Things have not been thawing out -

Virginia has been frozen and snow-covered for what feels like forever at this point, and here we go into February!

Retreats are scheduled to start on February 11th - so please, Mr. Sun - shine down some warmth over here so we can thaw out the parking areas and clear the walkways and get everything ready!

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It's Still Here!

The snow and the ice is still here.

More snow on top of the ice.

I had so many asking me "What about Flash???" that I thought I better take some photos as proof of life.

We are still parking at the bottom of our drive-hill, and using either the RZR with chains on, or the 4WD pickup with chains on to shuttle us to the bottom where the Subaru is parked because that's the only way of navigating our drive.

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Winter Wonderland!

This happened overnight and is continuing.

Am I wishing I were back in Morocco? 60 degree temps and sunshine?  YES!

But this has a beauty all of its own, too -

And Hubster Dave has been out plowing since daylight.

It's a LOT of snow, and there could be more coming.

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We're Back!

Hi everyone!

This was the LAST photo taken in Marrakech before we headed to the airport.

We had such an amazing time and there is no way to capture it all in one post, so I'll be posting things over the next little while to catch you up on all of the highlights.

There were lots and lots of highlights!

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I'm Calling It Sunnyside!

I spent the weekend quilting away - just like you knew I would.

I'm not sure why the push to get this done and dusted and the binding put on felt like such a "Must Do" but all I can think is that we can only take care of the things that are within our own grasp at the moment, and I grasped on to this.

I could make a difference with this.  At least to these random scraps I could!

So that's what I did.

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Oh No, Not Again!

This is what I woke up to this morning.

Actually, it was what I woke up to in the still wee small hours as Zoey jumped off the bed around 4am and I knew that if she didn't settle somewhere it was because she needed to go out.

So I padded down the stairs, turning on as little light as I could just to see my way so I don't bruise a hip on the kitchen island, turned right to go towards the back door by the laundry nook, turned on the outside light and.  OH. MY.

It was clear skies last evening!  Where did this come from?

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Is It Done Yet?!

All. Day. Long.

I spent the entire day making scrappy yellow backing blocks for the X-Plus quilt that likely by now needs a new name.

And I am here to let you know that YES!  All of the blocks are made.

And I even combed through the rest of the hunks and chunks in that pin, deciding which just needed to be cut down into Scrap User's System sizes so I could use them more easily, and which I really didn't like enough to save, and simply cut them down into strings and added them to the string bin where they will also find a place.

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More Yellow, Please!

The building of the Screaming Yellow Backing Blocks continues -

I need 36 and am more than halfway there at this point.

The process is so fun and relatively mindless. I only have a couple of rules for myself -

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They Call Me Mellow Yellow...

I knew from the start that yesterday was going to be a short day -

We'd made an appointment with the bank person over some finance stuff (so NOT exciting!) for 4pm, so I needed to be home by 3pm...it short sheeted my creative play by a couple of hours, but some progress was made on the next thing.

You just had to KNOW there was going to be a scrappy backing for my X-Plus quilt, didn't you?

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It's a Process!

This is me...taking photos of a construction process without checking to see if the photos are coming out clear, or if perhaps the camera lens is smeared with some kind of gunk likely from dealing with Tula's eye drops and other kitty rehabilitation stuff.

Half of my photos are no good, and I've already got the top together....so?? 

What's a girl to do?

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Stardust PDF Pattern Gift-Away!

It's MONDAY!  

The start of a new week with so many quilty plans in place -

It's also the PDF pattern release day of Stardust!

I have had so many inquiries as to when I was going to FINALLY put this one out there - 

Now.  It's Now!

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A Little Bit Hexie, And A Lot Tulalou!

I'm putting something pretty here because what is at the bottom of this post is NOT so pretty.

I finished my two side hexie borders!  

I didn't count how many hexies are in each border - numbers have a way of influencing me in not a good way and make me feel like something is too much work.  I just sew.  And when it's done it's done.

Piece counts don't matter!

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Stop Cleaning! Start Sewing!

My short sheeted day started out like any other - but with a cut off time in preparation for getting Jason to the airport.

There was not going to be much time for machine stitching the X-Plus blocks.

Even if I was more than happy to be at my machine after giving the area a good clean up!

Under the machine are some carpet squares, there mostly to keep the machine from vibrating (it works!) but it also collects every bit of thread, lint, dust, dog ears - you name it.

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Bit By The Spring Clean Bug!

For months (or what seems like months) I've had random piles of fabric on my home sewing room cutting table.

It's just another flat surface where anything dealing with sewing room stuff tends to land.

In this case, it was Fat Quarters and larger scrap pieces intended for filing in my fat quarter bins at home.

Yes - my fat quarter storage is at home because I need SOMETHING to pull from at home when not sewing at the QPO, and there is no room for this rack at the QPO.

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Can't Take The Scrappy Out Of The Quilter!

These blocks don't look like much. Honestly.

Not by themselves, anyway.

But just wait until you see where they are going!

That New Year's encouragement I gave myself (I refuse to use the word goal because that becomes a rule and rules are meant to be broken, or at least procrastinated upon!) had me diving in to a section of my Scrap User's System that has been ignored and passed over for years.

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Monday Monday -

I've finished the first binding of 2026!

I think we are off to a good start, don't you?

I pretty much rage quilted through December.

It's as if the chaos of the world matched the chaos of my heart and things that came to pass over the past year in my own life all came together in the chaos of the scrap bins and making this quilt was somehow tying up all of those loose ends and finding a way to a calmer place in my life.

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New Year's Aftermath!

This holiday stretch has felt like the longest in a long time!

Is it because Christmas happened on a Thursday and that Christmas morning we drove off to Tennessee to pick up Jason after his red-eye all night flight from Vancouver, Washington?

I have spent so many wonderful hours just basically "listening" to favorite movies while I relaxed and stitched.

I think I needed it!

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