What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I started to clean up the ironing surface in Studio U. Thankfully, we have until tomorrow to get the pictures ready! Don't forget if you have images (before and after), send them to me. elainetheriault@gmail.com.  

And if you have a great storage tip for anything, but especially some of those troublesome items, I'd love to share it. Some things are easy to find homes for, but some? Well, they are a bit more challenging. More on that tomorrow, as I found two items on the ironing board that are troublesome to store. 

It's time to ...

Oh my goodness  -- it's New Year's Eve! I can't say "where did the year go?" because so much happened this year, and well, I'm looking forward to 2022. Bring it on!

This morning, I got a chuckle as I looked back at New Year's Eve 2020. That's the beauty of a blog -- it's easy to see what happened on any given day. Well, it appears that I was doing the same thing last year. Cleaning up Studio B. HA!! I think it will be an ongoing process for a couple more years. 

Here ...

What a great day!! I'm taking a couple of extra days to goof around, and then I need to buckle down as some significant deadlines are looming, and I won't be as free as I am now. That's OK -- play hard, work hard!

I started the morning off with some geocaching. I need to get 6,190 points by Monday, and I started the day with zero. 

Here's the thing with geocaching. Those little containers are EVERYWHERE, and most are so small that you wouldn't know they were there unless they are pointed out to ...

A HUGE thank you to the Stratford Quilter's Guild for letting me be their guest speaker last night. It was so weird to be standing in front of a group of people and showing physical quilts! And I got to meet someone I hadn't seen in a LONG, LONG time, so we had a few minutes to catch up.  Hello Miriam - so good to see you last night. And I got to meet someone new. Well, not exactly new, since I met Pat on Zoom and feel like I know her very well. But I got to meet ...

I'm back home after two wonderful days sewing with friends! There was so much chatter going on that I was in grave danger of not accomplishing a single thing!!

And I wasn't alone. I saw this at Colleen's sewing machine at the end of the day. A partial seam that had been that way for most of the day!

A half-finished seam!

I'm always amazed at the amount of stuff that gets shuffled from one person to another whenever we meet. I delivered three quilts that had been quilted, and I brought home three more that ...

Not to bore you with my UPS package, but it's in the right state, so it should be delivered on Monday! Yippee!!!!

I can't wait until I have another package to send to see how to fix this commercial invoice problem! It doesn't matter, the package is arriving one business day late, and I can certainly live with that!

It makes me laugh because when I worked for a fabric company, which was concerned about the cost of shipping things but had zero issues with shipping overnight instead of 5 days. So what's the difference? Well ...

Here's the update on the UPS saga. 

Yeah!!!!!  I'll still be on alert until the thing actually arrives, but I have seen that it's left the initial depot! Now here's the thing -- can you tell me why this issue was resolved quickly, and last time, it took weeks? There was no reason for that massive delay the last time. Why drives me crazy is when I can't get an explanation for what happened. I can easily understand if they said a truck blew up or there was a fire or whatever. But to have no ...

There are some quilting components to the blog today, but you'll have to wait for them. I need to show you that I do other things than declutter my house and quilt!

When I decided to do a geocache for fun in August, I got hooked on this challenge. Yes -- challenges seem to be my thing, and it was all for a virtual badge! In this case, you have to collect so many points each month that is the equivalent of the height of the highest mountain on one of the seven continents. Yep - I was hooked. Month three ...

If you're looking for sewing stuff today, there isn't going to be any! Although it's hard to believe, I do other things than sewing. And even though I have tons of work to do, I decided to take the day off! I have to laugh because the other day, someone casually mentioned that there are people who might like to do what I do! Hmm - I hadn't thought about that before. But it's a crazy life - there's rarely a day off, the pay sucks, but the projects I get to work on and the ...

Another great day! OK -- every day is a great day - it just depends on how you look at it. Positivity is a good thing even though stupid things are happening in the world and around me, but I'm in a very fortunate position, so I really can't complain. 

The only thing I have is a TON of work, and it all needs to be done now. Computer work and sewing and quilting. When I woke up this morning, I just allowed myself to lay in bed contemplating it all but didn't get up! Well, not right away ...

Yesterday was D  -Day. D for delivery! And while I was out traipsing around, I received an e-mail from that UPS supervisor who is now my superhero. He was following up! You could have knocked me over when I saw that. He said he saw the package was marked as received, and could I verify that. And indeed it was received!! What a huge relief, and what a nice gesture from the UPS guy to follow up!!

Well, I'm a wee bit behind again this morning, but no fault other than my own. I had to prep the homework ...

What can I say?   I have the BEST friends ever! We had so much fun at the Virtual Retreat. Where else would you be able to chat to quilters from various parts of Northern Ontario while they were in their studios? The joke at one time became - how north are you? Because as they joined the call, each was more north than the other! We had people from Western Canada and from the US. And then a couple of people were on the call whose houses I could walk to! 

Oh yes -- so much fun! And I get so much ...

Well, I guess you figured out by the title that I had an AWESOME day with technology. It was a fabulous day!! I love technology, and the more I learn, the better I become. Just don't mess it up! 

I have to say that I'm happy with figuring out my body clock, and I'm not good if it gets messed up! Thanks to an upset tummy from Miss Murphy, I didn't get a good sleep the night before, but last night? Perfect! Hence, I was up at ridiculous o'clock (for you), and I got so ...

 Another great day with the Monday sewing group! I'm learning to get so much done. At the beginning of these Zoom sewing days, I will confess that I spent a lot of time chatting. Well, now I'm able to sew a lot more, and I accomplished a LOT towards the magazine quilt that needs to be in the mail by Thursday. There wasn't too much of a rush to finish it since I didn't even have the border print or the backing yet. 

I got a notification yesterday that it should arrive today. I wasn't ...

 Oh my --- what an enjoyable little break in the routine. I want to say a huge THANK YOU to K&A Quilt Studio for hosting us. It was great fun to finally meet Kate and Ann in person - I'd seen them many times over Zoom. The classroom is HUGE - that's all you can say to describe it -- huge, bright, great tables and chairs, fully equipped with irons and ironing boards. What more could you want? GREAT FRIENDS to fill the space. 

Well, we didn't fill the space to capacity, not even close, but it worked for keeping ...

 I told you yesterday was a great day! And today is going to be just as great!! The temperature has dropped significantly, and the humidity is gone. One little trick that doesn't make the heat so unbearable is that since we don't use the AC, we are more acclimatized to the high temperatures. That way, the backdoor is open for the girls to come and go, we don't suffer as we go inside and outside, and we can enjoy our backyard as if it's part of our house, which we do!

Having said that, if the ...

During Quilt Canada, I stumbled across some demos from The Sewing Room in Calgary. I really liked the teachers and what they were demoing and just their entire setup. I found out that they had a T-shirt class in August and well, I want to learn how to use my serger better. So I enrolled. I believe we are 15 in the class - that's crazy!!! And they have a perfect set-up for multiple cameras. Very well done, but then they have a techie person who works for them. 

The first day we chatted about sizing and drafting the pattern ...

I have to laugh! I'm working on some individual and group virtual challenges. This is my second group challenge, which means that COLLECTIVELY we have a goal to meet. There were four of us in my previous group, and some of them weren't too serious about keeping up. OK -- two of them weren't serious, one was sort of serious, and then there was me. 

Now I'm in a different group. Yikes --- SUPER serious. I walked 14.5 KM yesterday and thought - wow - that was a good distance. I just checked the distances, and Helen Anne BEAT ...

 Oh, dear!! I'm slipping! We had a great time at Monday sewing until we got to chatting about our show and tell. I always do a show and tell, just like we would if we were in person! So things were going great - we were enjoying the quilts and other projects, and I'm always last. I showed my double wedding ring quilt with the curved edges. 

I mentioned that I had made the backing and the binding. Then Diane asked if I made bias binding. WHAT????  Oh my gosh -- I can't believe that I didn't make ...

At the last minute (I knew late in the afternoon on the day before we left), one of the instructors wasn't able to attend the convention. My classes had low attendance so I was asked to step in. I was asked first if I was comfortable teaching the class which I was. So my class got canceled and I stepped in for the full class.

I didn't have any samples of the ruler work but I had my own quilting samples (and embroidery) packed. That's what got hung up in the room.

The two classes were full ...