The Day That Got Away -

There are some days that just run amok.

Run Amok.  I love that term!  It looks weird, 

Do people even use this phrase anymore, or did it go the way of Jane Austen and maybe Agatha Christie?

I tried to come up with a better definition of yesterday, but here you have it.

It Ran Amok.

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Fill Up Those Porch Rails!

When every available space on the side porch is full - we've got one bang up of a quilt show!

This was such a productive and fun group and the quilts coming out of this group are phenomenal.  Just look at that color array!

(Except for that which is hidden by the hugeness of my head in this selfie, but hey - we were having a great time!)

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Bye, Bye August!

This was just the best way to wave August Goodbye and welcome in September!

We hadn't had a fire pit evening in a few weeks - and the weather could not have been better.

Low humidity.  The cool of the evening coming on.  I don't even think we were bothered by bugs, though the tiki torches help a lot.

It was just enjoyable all the way around, what a way to wind down what was a busy over-the-top stressful weekend for me, and a full-on quilting frenzy for the September Quiltvillians!

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Out With The Old -

Let me tell you about my weekend. Pour yourself a cuppa - get comfy, because this is going to be long winded.

I went to update the index page of my website. My webhost started out as Startlogic, then they were acquired by iPage, which then got swallowed up by Network Solutions.

I built my page myself, simply, using Weebly many years ago. It was just a landing page, with links that took folks where they needed to find things, and my Ecwid store was a tab attached to the main page. Easy. Functional.

Well, upon accessing my dashboard on Saturday morning to upload an edit, I was greeted with a message to update my PHP. It wouldn't update me because my Weebly page didn't accept the higher PHP version. Weebly is being discontinued.

So I upgraded to build a new front page on another builder. This one cost more, but you know. How hard could it be?

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Drawing Day!

Welcome to the weekend, Quilters!
Our big gift-away event is TODAY so I thought I would get this out of the way, and THEN we can get on to retreat goodies and projects-in-progress updates.
I'm thrilled with the response, I can't wait to see what you make with your own Sunnyside blocks!
This quilt is a true scrap buster and each little block is so much fun, I know we'll see some fantastic quilts being made in your own colors and fabrics.

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Soaking Up The Porch Time

I'd been waiting for this all day!

Afternoon porch sitting with the September Quiltvillians.

I had walked through the kitchen earlier to the effervescent aroma of freshly juiced limes.  I later found out that they juiced NINETY (Yes, as in Nine-Zero) limes so they'd have fresh beverage makings on hand in the fridge to last over the coming week.

Strawberry Margaritas on the porch to celebrate the last few days of August and into September we go.

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Nine Days Until India!

All of a sudden we are at the end of August.

I thought August would last forever - but no. It passes just as quickly as everything else.

Kids are already back to school.

You can feel the season change coming - it's darker later in the mornings and I'm finding it hard to get out of bed until it is light outside.

I just looked at the calendar thinking that surely I have another couple couple of weeks before I leave for my India tour, but no!  I leave a week from Saturday?!?!?!

Yesterday's main job in between getting the retreat ready for the next group was to kit up those hexie kits I'm going to need for travel stitching.

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So Much To Show!

They filled the whole porch!

These wonderful ladies who came from Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, Georgia and beyond.

We had a wonderful week, and while I missed most of them on Monday due to my early morning airport run, I came back to find all of the kind things they did for me to make flipping the house so much easier.

The rain laundry!  They cleaned off the design walls with sticky rollers.  They recovered the pressing stations with new freezer paper giving me one less thing on my to-do list as a welcome home to Dave.

These little things.  They mean so much.  Thank you ladies!

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This Was Our Weekend!

I'm just going to put this right here front and center.

If you go hungry at retreat, it's your own doing.  LOL!

This was our Sunday lunch spread - as Sunday was the last full day of retreat, everything came out of the fridge for the best snacky kind of lunch you could ever have.

The last day of retreat is the best day to revisit all of the leftover tasty morsels from the previous days of plentiful food.

There's something here for everyone!

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Friday In The Rain!

The rain came in torrents yesterday morning.

I had finished writing yesterday's blog (my desk is in the basement) and when I went upstairs it looked like 5pm in the winter outside.

I texted over to Jen - no walk, rain incoming!

And right when I sent the text, the sky opened and whooo-doggie! It POURED!

Thus began my "accomplishing little to nothing" day.

This was the scene I walked into later as everyone was on the porch for lunch.  Rain had moved on...

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We're Just Getting Started!

Well this makes things interesting!

I'm really excited to see my "Just Another String Star" coming together.

I was a bit intimidated at first - not that I haven't done Y seams before, but it had been a while and there was the additional stretch and bulk of diamonds with bias on ALL edges, and also all of the seams in the diamonds from the string piecing.

I've developed a system and things are now coming together smoothly!

Except for Hazel. Always Hazel!

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Sew Fabulous!

This week got a little bit hijacked with our Gift-Away Trifecta and the drawing sign-up snafus...but here we are, all of the quilts and projects over the porch rail with the August Quiltvillians 2.0!

We worked around the weather, finding an afternoon full of sunshine so we could get these photos taken.

We had so many newbies, and that was exciting! I always love seeing things and feeling the excitement of first-timers as they discover the fun we have here.

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Days Filled To The Brim!

This is what happens when a hand stitching date is accepted!

And it came right on time because some really weird storm system blew through and blipped the power (Thank you Generac for doing your job!) and the rain came in torrents.

We were cozy in the Hen Den!

Of course, what is a girl to do with a hand stitching invite, when she has nothing to hand stitch??

Quickly grab some papers and pieces and get started on a new project.

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A Gift-Away Trifecta!

There is a lot going on today!  My head is spinning!

But it's all coming together in a VERY VERY good way.

It's Sunnyside pattern release and gift-away day and we've got lovely Notable Neutrals fabric rolls from Cotton to Quilts to include with THAT event.

And my publisher C&T is also hosting a gift away for my new book Scrap-Savvy over on their site! (More details below, keep reading!)

And we'll top that off with my friend Bruce Leonard's newest Hadley Carroll Quilt City book release also happening today! It's called Payment Declined and you are going to love it!

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Can't Believe It's Monday!

So much for the weekend!

It was gone in a flash -

And speaking of Flash....he has started to exhibit some new "normal" cat behaviors after being with us for about a year and a half now.

Learning is slow when you don't have a mama cat around to teach you -

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Rain, Shine & Quilting!

Who wants to start the day with a dirt road hike?!?

I found five willing quilters eager to get some steps in.

No rain in the forecast? Great! Let's go!

It was a beautiful morning, a bit overcast, but we didn't mind.  And this route is mostly shady by tree cover anyway.

Only one vehicle passed us as we headed up the long and winding gravel/dirt road in between two mountains and alongside a creek.

Welcome to a Virginia holler, ladies!

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A Full Up House!

This retreat is off with a bang!

A bang of laughter!

This is what I walked in to find yesterday morning as the August Quiltvillians 2.0 were just sitting down to brunch in the dining room due to rain.

2.0??  Yes!  Because we have 2 groups of Quiltvillians from my Quiltville’s Open Studio group that visit in August.  The first group is at the last few days of July and crosses over into August, and these lovely ladies come about 2 weeks later.  

At  any rate, we have 6 from Iowa, 3 from Illinois, 1 from Wisconsin, and the rest is a partridge in a pear tree!

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Lost In Strings -

I am back in the string of things!

I found myself with a couple of hours yesterday after everything at the retreat was made ready.

All of these little bits and pieces and strings and strips have got to be sewn into something.

The best thing about string piecing?  ANYTHING can be made with strings.

You can cover any shape.  You can color it anyway you want.  There are no right or wrong ways to do it as long as the seam allowance is enough to hold it together.

It's fun.  It's rewarding.

And yes - I even LIKE the tearing off of the paper when units are trimmed up and done.

And in the case of these blocks - I even like sewing the Y seams.  There.  I said it.

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Binding Bliss!

I already knew that Bliss was a heavy quilt.

Seam allowances are about 3/8'' instead of a 1/4'' so they wrap around the hexie papers enough to hold it more securely.  This puts the basting tacking stitches closer to the center of the hexagon on the back to firmly hold them in place.  

These are small pieces, and with all of that folding of corners on the back side, there is more fabric on the back of the top than is showing on the front, or at least it feels like it.

Add a batting and a backing to the whole thing and this beast is HEAVY!

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Quilting With the TaDa's!

It was short, it was sweet, it was crammed full of quilty fun!

The Tada Quilters were down from Erie, Pennsylvania and beyond and through they were only with us until Sunday morning, they packed a full week's worth of activities into their stay.

Not only did they quilt into the wee small hours, but they took time out to cook amazing dishes, while others headed out on early morning dirt road hikes, or even took off early Saturday morning to go hike 7 miles on the Appalachian Trail.

I couldn't keep up with these ladies!!  They knew what they wanted to do and they just did it.

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