Hello! I’m back from 7 days of teaching at the Quiltfest in Pigeon Forge, TN. It was wonderful! The quilt show is put on by the city of Pigeon Forge with help from the local guilds. The quilts were lovely, the people were very friendly, and a good time was had by one and all.

I’ll share a variety of things from Pigeon Forge with you in the next few days. Today I want to show you this amazing African zebra print fabric that I got from the Traveling Quilt Boutique booth. It’s cotton and I love it! I have no idea what I’m going to do with it. I might wear it :-). I’ve already washed and dried this 2-yard piece and it’s even better than it was when I bought it.

I walked in the mornings with Nancy Smith (from the Great American Quilt Factory) and I spotted this door to an art supply shop. It makes me smile to see the two photos together.

I download the This American Life podcast every week. The stories are always good. Last week the show was Bad Bank and I especially recommend it. Alex Blumberg and NPR’s Adam Davidson explain what’s up with the banks today in plain, non-political language. You can download the podcast or listen to it for free on your computer.

These same guys did the amazing and scary Giant Pool of Money podcast last May (which you can still listen to) AND they are behind the blog planetmoney.

I’m a quilter, not an economist. But I have learned so much from these guys and the rest of the folks at planetmoney that I felt like I should share the links with you. Let’s face it, the economy is not so great right now. Personally I’m fighting fear with information and these guys have good information.

Traveling can be lots of fun – but packing is a job. I’m leaving for Pigeon Forge tomorrow and need to pack for 8 days and bring 7 quilts.

I travel with 2 not-so-huge bags and I keep them each under 40 lbs. to protect my arms.

In the first photo I have quilts in each suitcase. I’ve put them in XL ziplock bags so that, if my bag gets wet, the quilts will stay dry. As you can see there’s not much room left for clothes!

Luckily, these suitcases expand so I did manage to pack my clothes!

As I was driving away from my house today I realized that some of the trees in our neighborhood are leafing out! That’s little baby almost-yellow leaves on the branches!

My neighbor, Joan, has a plum tree in her backyard and there are white flowers all over it. We almost always have an Easter freeze and Easter is late this year. I don’t know whether she’ll have plums or not. I hope she does because Joan shares her bounty with us :-).

And my redbud is about to burst into full bloom! We’ve been bouncing between freezes and days in the 80s. The plants, however, seem to think that spring is definitely here.

The kids were over for dinner last night. Jack and Elanor came with sticky suckers so they were ushered directly to the back yard to finish them.

I grabbed the camera and very quickly snapped off 26 pictures. I still remember film cameras… I rarely took photos in the “old days” because I never had film and/or I didn’t want to waste film. Now I just snap away! I love it!

We have just posted the results from the 1st Ever Piece O’ Cake Block Contest on our site showing all of the entries, including the winners. (Oops – there were broken links that caused the images to be invisible. I hope I fixed it. Hit your refresh button if you don’t see them.) Two of the winners are Sarah Crumley who made this amazingly cute purse and Carrie Pippins who made a table topper with a lined prairie point edge!

Thank you to each and every one of you who took part in this contest! We have truly enjoyed seeing the creative ways that you used this block. In our mind, every one of you is a winner!

We hope that everyone enjoys seeing the projects made using this block. It is a reminder of just how much fun it can be to change a pattern to suit your own quilting needs.

Happy stitching,

Becky and Linda