What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

It is less than three weeks from the turn-in day for entries to the Mountain State Fair, and I am in the process of getting it all together. This year, the turn in day is September 1, the earliest it can possibly be. The first thing I did was to register online for all the categories I entered in previous years. I may not actually have an entry for everything, but it is far easier to turn in an unused entry tag rather than try to add an entry. I printed out the entry list, and started looking around for ...

This week, I worked on finishing the bird quilt. After sewing the binding by hand, the next task was to make a label. I had a bird panel left, and thought it would be great to do an embroidered label with it. I added some side panels in the same fabric as the backing to make it large enough for the hoop.

Top and bottom fabric was added to the panel, and then it was hooped for embroidery with stabilizers.

But, when I started to do the stitching of the label, the font size is too small and was not ...

With all the entries I’ll be doing in the fair, I have quite a bit of preparation to do. I pull things out I have made in the past year, go through my blog posts to make sure I have included everything I can, and maybe whip up a project or two for other categories. Then there is making sure all the quilts have labels and sleeves. Everything else sewn needs a label as well. I need to determine which photographs taken over the past year will be selected for entry, print them and mount them according to the ...

This week, we had two drives with car clubs going up to the high country in the northern mountain area of North Carolina. One drive was a history tour starting in South Carolina and ending in Banner Elk, with the leaders telling us about Revolutionary War sites. We had 17 MINIs on that run.

Our mountain roads are not exactly straight.

We went past battle grounds and parks dedicated to history, along with farms and the lovely pastoral scenes so typical of our state. We went by lots of pastures with cows or horses, and some had goats or sheep ...

I had all good intentions of getting some sewing done this past weekend, but you know what happens sometimes to best laid plans. Friday was spent entirely on Shop Hop, visiting four stores over 90 miles apart, plus lunch with a group from our guild. The promised rainy day on Saturday canceled a car club drive, and I thought maybe I’d be able to spend some time on a new project. But as that day progressed, I got busy cleaning the house, and it just got away from me. I did a deeper clean than my usual, and it ...

Such a busy week this week with the State Fair. I was there five out of the 10 days it is on, with an extra day before it started to help with the quilt competition entries. It was such fun to be able to see the shows and enter the competitions this year, I have been looking forward to it for two years. Each evening I was competing, we went to the fair in the evening as the turn in time for dishes was between 6 and 7 pm. Dishes are checked in, given a number, and then wait for ...

Having two year’s worth of projects to choose from meant lots of entries into the Mountain State Fair. I had to go back twice to the expo building to find them all! During the cooking contests, we had about an hour each time to enjoy the shows and exhibits, see the Moo-ternity ward’s newborn calves, little pigs and baby chicks. Many of the entries did not place, but a few more ribbons were discovered. I ran out of quilting categories to enter, so many quilted items were put into crafts in various categories. In the expo building, the ...

Over the past few weeks, I’ve finished up all the Zoom contracts that I had for my Scrap Dancing program. On the last two, I mentioned that I would be doing a tutorial on Pin Weaving. I thought I could just link the Moda Bake Shop post, but their website update appears to have dropped older posts. So, I have pulled the photos from my original pattern, and this project will be coming this week. I’ll do a tutorial on pin weaving, then a second post will assemble this bag.

Out in the back, the rhododendrons are finally ...