Last summer we gave the Napa Valley Quilters Guild in Napa California permission to use our Everyday Best pattern from Quilts with a Spin as the basis for their Opportunity Quilt. Here is the final product. Twenty-three women worked on the quilt. Barbara, who sent us this photo said that many expanded their skills as the guild offered classes in paper piecing and hand appliqué.

Here is the final quilt. Barbara says that everyone in the guild loves the quilt! Of course they do – this is a really pretty quilt and we hope they raise lots of money with it.

I embrace technology. I love my Kindle and look forward to falling deeply in love with an iPad (in a year or so when version 2 or 3 comes out). However, I freely admit that there are some truly lovely books. whit that thought in mind, here is a site that you might be interested in…

BibliOdyssey is Paul Peacay's blog. He lives in Sydney and posts beautiful, book-related images. For example, I love this chicken from his post of Dutch picture books.

There is a big button on the upper right side of his blog that takes you to 'The Annotated Archives of BibliOdyssey'. This is an easy way to find Mr. Peacay's older posts. They are worth looking at.

I think it's funny that I find so many great images on a site called Weird Friends. It is true that I sift through a lot to find the images that make me smile, but I think it's worth it. Seriously, does this not make you smile out loud…

And this… I'm not a dog person but if I was, I would want this headboard. It looks appliqued.

And then there are these quilts that make me very happy. They look like quilts made without rulers which is very much what we are doing in our book, Applique Outside the Lines.

Those of you on our eNewsletter list know this already – we are about to ship our newest pattern pack!

My Whimsical Quilt Garden is packaged like Aunt Millie's Garden – it is not exactly a book but it's more than a regular pattern. MWQG has twenty, 10" blocks that you can use to make a big quilt, or a smaller quilt, or in any other way you can think of.

We also have a fabric kit for the 20-block quilt. Linda is the one doing the work on this (think you, Linda!) and she matched the fabrics in her quilt as closely as possible.  

Do you remember the block contest we had last year? Photos of the winning projects are in MWQG. Congrats to Sarah Crumly, Carrie Pippins, Rebecca Bishop, and Barbara Annn Lambrecht.

As I was walking around the classroom I noticed Janey's pin cushion. It was in what looked like a tiny Nantucket basket. It wasn't one, it was an inexpensive imitation and I wish I had one of my own! I love the colors and textures of the pin heads next to the blue scissor handles.

Even better close up…

Once I noticed Janey's pin cushion, I noticed other little still lifes…

I'm going to try to remember to take more of this sort of photo in the future.

I shopped – of course I shopped – when I was in California! I visited Back Porch quilt shop in Pacific Grove and bought fabric and books. I washed and dried the fabric yesterday and was struck by my choices. I seem to be loving neutrals and green right now – go figure.

Gail has a wonderful selection of books you just don't see anywhere else. I"m looking forward to looking at these soon. Notice I didn't say 'read'. I'm going to look at the pretty pictures and be inspired!

Kathy came back from Carmel with this lovely card that she found at Findings. Findings has ribbon and cards and I don't know what else because I didn't get there. They don't have a web site which is too bad!

The flowers on the card (top, right) and envelope were cut from wallpaper. The measuring tape is real (or copied, I can't remember). The detail below shows the zigzag stitching and the buttons with string ties on the back of the envelope.