I'm leaving for Kansas City on Wednesday to attend Spring Quilt Market. I'm going to look for new notions and fabric. I'm hoping to make available a variety of wonderful dots on the Piece O' Cake website.

My question to you is, if I were to find a few wonderful large prints, prints that I myself want and will use, who of you might be interested in them? For example, this amazing print by Brandon Mably for Rowan…

Or this luscious print by Heather Bailey for Free Spirit…

Both of these are pieces that I bought at a quilt show recently and they are waiting, in my stash, to be used. I will either use them in applique or on the back of a quilt but they would also be fun in a pieced quilt.

 I know that when I poll the quilters in my lectures, most say that they don't buy this sort of print. But surely there are some of you who would if you could just find them. Or who would happily let someone else find a few cool prints for you.

I've considered starting a yard of the month club – although knowing me it might be the yard every-other-month club. If you think you'd sign up for something like that, let me know in a comment. If I get enough 'yeses' I'll buy some big prints along with the dots.

FYI – did you notice the twitter links on the blog, over there in the column on the right? Christopher taught me (again) how to tweet and use Instagram. Im planning to send fun photos from market. 

If you sign up to follow me on Twitter, know that I am not going to bombard you with tweets. If I manage more than 2-3 a week, I'll be doing good. That said, there will be more from market.

My mom wants to make her own Welcome to the North Pole quilt. How fun is that! Luckily I have a fair amount of fabric for her to work from. I have kept a variety of small scraps of fabric that I always mean to use but then forget I have. Those are now Mom's. She has started the Ice Cream Cone cottage…

This is interesting because mom has not appliqued much at all and I teach applique. But neither of us wants this to turn into a 'teaching experience.' Mom has her own ideas about what she wants to do and I answer technique questions as she has them. Like how to do doors with cutaway applique. (FYI – click here for a video showing you how.) My mom has a naturally nice stitch which makes me happy!

Watching mom is reminding me again of how much work it can be for a true beginner to absorb all of the details that can go with hand applique. I love having beginners in a class and I do my best to make sure that they have a good experience. I will try even harder from now on!

I have written lately about cleaning out for a garage sale. Mom decided to join in the fun and she came up with more costume jewelry for the garage sale. After the bag of jewels was taken away, she remembered that she hadn't seen the little diamond stud earrings that my dad gave her years ago. 

She thought that maybe she had given them to Elanor with some other small earrings a few weeks ago. No, she had not. Then I got to thinking about the little rhinestone studs that I had removed from Elanor's bag of jewels. Surely they weren't in there. I had one pair that looked likely but Mom didn't agree.

I had to get a CT scan on my head last week and I had to take off my presumably fake diamond stud earrings. I put them on the counter and forgot about them until the next day. I figured they were cheap studs and I just let it go.

Yesterday, a week later, Mom and I were in the car and I got to wondering if those could be the missing diamonds… Yes, they were. The jeweler said so.

Notice that the ones on the left have a bit more clarity, even at a small size? Would I notice that if I didn't know they were the real ones. Probably not. But they look a whole lot more exciting in my ears now than they did last week!

I thought I'd share this with you because if your mom, grandmother, aunt, or sister has something like this stashed away, will you recognize it if you have to sort out their worldly possessions? 

FYI - Turns out that I have a bit more of a sinus infection that is going to have to be dealt with at the end of May. Not a big deal but I'm glad to have had the CT scan because otherwise my physician would not have seen it.

I've been working on my quilt. I broke my rule about stitching before the whole thing is designed so much of what you see is already sewn down. It's back up on the design wall so that I can cut the rest of the pieces. Here it is with the overlay over it. You can sort of see what still needs to be cut.

It's prettier, brighter, with the overlay pinned up and out of the way…

The leaves on the tree are sewn using the cutaway applique techinque so they are a lot bigger here than they will be later.

So far so good!

I couldn't help myself. As Martha projects go the silver spray paint idea is pretty low-impact – not time or money consuming. I decided to transform a basket and some curly willow branches…

The vase with the sticks has been on the end table next to our sofa for a long time. Two years or more and while I like them I was ready for a change. I knew painting them would be a risk but I figured if I didn't like them that was a sign that they needed to go.

More paint ended up on the newspapers than on the sticks. I should have taken a photo of them back in the vase but trust me when I tell you that they didn't work. The vase is too gold to work with silver sticks. I transfered them to a tall clear vase with clear glass marbles in the bottom for weight. They just didn't look right in my room. Luckily they work in Lorna's living room, on the floor next to a bookcase. See, I didn't need them anymore!

I do like the basket and have plans to use it during parties for chips or whatever…

In other news, I'm sending out a newsletter on Thursday. The new book, Applique With Attitude should be in my hands on Friday so if you order (or have ordered) one it'll ship on Monday or Tuesday.