What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Lately, I feel like all I’ve been doing is driving. When I’m not driving my truck, I’m driving my longarm. That’s about the only things I’ve been doing. In between, I sleep because I’m so tired from all the driving. I’m still waiting for things to level out a little, but every time something calms down, something else pops up to take its place. Life can sure be crazy sometimes!

While I’m busy trying to face all my challenges with as much grace as possible, I’m throwing in a few stitches ...

My mojo is still rebelling. It’s in the building, but it’s very sluggish and stubborn right now!

I’m still mainly running the longarm with what time I do have in the studio. All I can say is: I’m glad the weather is somewhat warmer because there’s been something making me leave the house nearly every day. I’m tired.

I keep telling myself that I haven’t been getting any sewing done, but that’s not completely true. On breaks from the longarm, I can sometimes manage to sneak in a few minutes of machine ...

So many have asked about my little Singer sewing machine that I decided I’d just make a whole post about her!

This little machine belonged to my grandmother. It lived in her utility room some of the time, and in her breezeway some of the time.

I’ve sewed a lot of miles on this machine at her house. Made a lot of my own clothes during junior high and high school. And lots of quilt pieces have gone through this machine.

She’s a model 15-91, NOT a Featherweight. I have the original manual, and an entire box ...

Twenty-six years ago today (in 1999), I launched my little business. So doesn’t that mean I just finished 25 years in business? I think that math is correct.

So 25 years is a pretty big deal of an anniversary to celebrate, right?

I’ve completely lost track of how many patterns I’ve published in that amount of time, but it’s somewhere around 150, and TWO books!

In 2009, I added the longarm and started machine quilting for customers (and quilting my own quilts). I’ve quilted a total of 1262 quilts on the longarm so far, and ...

My bestie, Victoria Findlay Wolfe, has a new book out. It actually came out in September, but I took time to read all the way through mine before posting about it. It’s so wonderful!

It’s called “The Quilting Experience: A Celebration of Community and Patchwork Patterns”.

This book is a lovely, hard-cover book with soooo many stories included. Stories from quilters about why they quilt, how they got started, special projects they’ve made, what quilts mean to them, fun they’ve had at quilting events or in quilting groups, and so much more.

And there are lots ...

As I’ve mentioned before, we are fixin’ to move, so I’ve been seriously trying to downsize everything (studio and house) so that it will all fit into our new, smaller house.

As time for moving draws nearer, I’m ramping up my efforts to downsize even further, so to help with that, I’m having a Moving Sale in my Etsy Shop for the entire month of April!

Everything in the shop is 10% off for the entire month, with the exception of PDF patterns. So that means finished quilts, gift items, print patterns, booklets, even the clearance ...

Popping on to show you some of what I’ve been working on lately. I realized that I do a lot of stitching in lots of different categories, so I’m gonna break the projects down into those categories, and show you what I’m working on in each category.

I’ve got 11 different categories today, so let’s get started!

HAND QUILTING:

After nearly 11 years, I finally made a space to get my hand-quilting frame set back up. The space is still not completely organized, but what’s left is gonna take some time to go through ...

Hi, there! If you haven’t already done it by now, I hope you’ll check out the July/August 2023 issue of Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting magazine.

I have an article in there this time!

It’s about battling burnout. I think we all have to do that now and then. It’s a real thing.

Right around the time I got asked to write the article, I had just come out of a huge slump my ownself, and therefore, I had plenty to say!

If you find yourself in a slump, there are some good suggestions ...

I’m not much of a decorator — my sister got all of that gene in our family. So while I love looking at stuff other people have done, I never seem to do much of it myself.

My youngest daughter travels a lot, and she buys me a souvenir thimble everywhere she goes. I also have a few that I’ve collected myself over the years — ones that belonged to my grandmother or that came in vintage sewing boxes I picked up various places. They were all stuffed in a bag for lack of anywhere nice and safe to display ...

I seem to always start January off with a flurry of activity. Maybe it’s because winter keeps me inside. Maybe it’s because The Final Countdown inspires me with a fresh start. Maybe it’s because I’m all excited to get some stuff done and off my to-do list.

I also usually time travel back to find my oldest UFOs and try to finish up at least one of those during January. This year, I located my oldest UFO, but it requires custom quilting, so it did not get done, because customer stuff always makes my own things ...

I thought I’d pop on with an update on what I’ve been working on this summer so far. I was moving several things along fairly well, once my slump was over, but got immediately waylaid by elbow replacement surgery, which I was not expecting to have to have. But here I am, back at square one with healing up my broken right elbow, while still having my left wrist in a cast part of the time, so all I can do for the moment is wander around my studio looking wistfully at all the things I want to ...

The saga of the broken elbow continues . . .

It’s been a long haul. Nearly nine months since I very un-gracefully changed my life in the blink of an eye!

Are you sick of hearing about it? I’m sure sick of talking about it, but it seems to want to consume my life right now, so I figured a new update was in order.

Three weeks in a cast, two 6-week rounds of physical therapy, countless hours of “occupational therapy” trying to act as normal as possible, and I’m still not where I should be. Even if I wanted ...

Popping on today with some studio updates that don’t seem to fit in anywhere else.

I never did get around to showing you some of the finished projects I completed last year, so here they are, in no particular order . . .

A veteran’s quilt. This quilt was made from blocks that members of my guild made in one of our monthly exchanges. I won them in that month’s lottery, and finished them into this quilt for donation. I was a couple blocks short, so I had an Americana teddy bear panel in my box of panels, and it ...

I’ve tried to write this post three times. I don’t like spreading bad news, and I really dislike when it appears that I’m looking for sympathy — I’m not!

But in the interest of keeping things real, I felt compelled to come clean.

So . . . last Thursday morning, bright and early, this happened:

Two days before, My Cowboy had snapped this photo of these three darling angels:

My beagles: Chopper, Casey, and Tracker

Thursday morning, Tracker, on the right, got the zoomies at chore time, as he often does. And if you watch THIS video, and pay close ...

Do you wanna see some of what I’ve been working on lately?

I’m a flitter by nature, so my projects are all over the place. Plus . . . I’ve been cleaning out a lot of long-forgotten spaces, and I’ve unearthed a lot of long-forgotten stuff! (If you read clear to the end, I’m sharing some of my goodies in a give-away.)

I just finished reorganizing all my pre-cut scraps, and I’m completely giddy about it. And now I want to start making umpteen more scrap quilts! But first, I need to finish a lot more things ...

It’s been bitter cold and snowy here, and altho we don’t have it near as bad as folks further north, I still don’t like it much! We’re finally gonna have a high temperature above 0 degrees today for the first time in days, even tho as I write this, it’s still only -4 out. But the sun is shining, which always helps my mood.

Here’s how we have to dress to go outside for chores:

I have to admit it’s beautiful, altho deadly, if you think about it. I’ve been so worried ...

Thought I’d pop in today with some fun stuff for a change! I’ve been fairly boring lately. I guess that’s what happens when you never go anywhere; and for lack of anything better to do, I’m just working every day! You’d think I’d be catching up some, but I don’t feel like I am.

Anyway, I’ve found a couple things I think you’ll like, so I’m here today to tempt you with those.

Here’s a couple links you might wanna check out:

Rita at Red Pepper Quilts has a ...

Three weeks into the new year. And I’m not off to a real great start, I must say.

On January 2nd, My Cowboy was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure. Just one more horrible thing to add to his already long list of incurable ailments. And more pills to take.

On the 6th, we both got new eyeglasses, because . . . well . . . we’re getting old and have the beginnings of cataracts. I really like my new ones — you can see them in some of the photos below.

On the 7th, I was outfitted with this lovely piece of footwear:

Stress fracture ...

Back in June, it was the 10th anniversary of the start of my blog! I let it slip by without noticing. I woke up in the middle of the night last night, thinking about longarm quilting (am I the ONLY one who does that?), and suddenly realized I’ve been at it for over 10 years!

Here’s a little timeline for you:

• • In 1970, my grandmother enrolled me in 4-H sewing classes (I was 8 years old), and I learned to use a sewing machine. I had already been wielding a needle and thread by hand since the age ...

I love to walk into my studio and see all of the beautiful fabrics on the shelves. However, I do not like to fold them and try to keep them neat and organized when they are folded.

I never seem to fold them the same size….so I decide to invest in some Polar Notions fabric boards. They are so easy to use and keep the fabric on display, neat and organized. I have gotten up to 10 yards on 1 board or as little as a yard. I have 100 of these boards and need to order 200-300 more ...