I spent 5 wonderful days with 23 wonderful women at Empty Spools. Some knew each other before they got to class, but everyone was a friend by the time the class was over. If you ever get a chance to come to an Empty Spools seminar, I’m pretty sure you’d love it!
We all headed home last Wednesday; I got home late Thursday. I meant to upload these photos then, but this was a very busy Easter weekend. (I hope your weekend was as nice as mine was.) Enjoy the slideshow!
This weekend, March 18-20, is International Quilting Weekend and The Quilt Show is hosting a party! You can win prizes and see all of their shows (over 200!) for free at TheQuiltShow.com. Look for me in shows 611 and 1704. Remember that all the shows are free, all weekend long.
There are $11,000 worth of prizes at The Quilt Show party! Click the image below to enter the drawing.
And don’t forget to spend time quilting this weekend too :-).
Susan sent me photos of her lovely Backyard Birds quilt. Isn’t it lovely! Way to go, Susan.
She said:
I have sewn for years but as I work full time I have never had the opportunity to develop my patchwork skills beyond a simple sampler quilt. I am undergoing medical treatment since July and I am using my time off work and getting treatment to patchwork, learning new techniques and work on creating some wonderful quilts.
I quilted the blocks separately. I attended a quilt group at Coles Sewing Centre, Nottingham England, and my lovely teacher Gilli Theokritoff helped me through the tricky bits!! I had never done free motion quilting before and Gilli pointed me in the direction of youtube and watching Leah Day. I started off just drawing, then practising on practice blocks and can say after a lot of effort I now have a work of art on my wall. When I read Linda’s intro in the booklet and the comment re getting through cold winter and difficult times I really wanted to agree I cant wait for the spring when all the treatment is over and the song birds return.
I like this choice of background fabric. I don’t know that I would have chosen it, but it’s very pretty. Susan also included a photo of her detailed documentation patch. I’m impressed!
Susan added:
I am getting on well with my treatment looking forward to the spring when I get back into work, with some wonderful skills learnt, new friends made and several quilts sewn.
And this…
Breast cancer, 1 in 10 women my age get it…Luckily I had a routine screening in May and something was picked up,
My advice to you all is if you have any concerns, LUMPS bumps whatever as soon as you can go to your doctor. If you get the opportunity to have screening Take it. I am so lucky routine screening found it, and it’s treatable. Don’t be frightened to say I am worried about this. Do something about it. With love, Susan
I agree with Susan on this point. I’m a big believer in treating your body like a used car—one that you want to drive forever. If something isn’t working, get it looked at.
Today is the day! I will be Pat Sloan’s guest on American Patchwork & Quilting Radio today (Monday, September 28) at 4pm Eastern, 3pm Central. Click here to listen to the whole show. I’ll be on in the second half of the program.
If you can’t tune in to listen live, you can listen to the podcast later. Click APQ Radio and follow the instructions to find my podcast—and many more.
I’m looking forward to visiting with you over the internet radio waves later today :-).
Maureen Widder sent me this. Too cute! Maureen reports that the quilts that she made for her daughters were fun to sew. I would have to agree :-).
Maureen Widder’s Completely Dotty quilt.
The foundation paper pieced blocks are from our Completely Dotty pattern.
If you subscribe to my newsletter, you know that our newest book, Wool Applique the Piece O’ Cake Way, has arrived. I haven’t written much about this book on the blog yet because I wanted to make videos first. I had to wait until I got my nails done, yesterday, to film the videos because when your hands are going to be preserved online for all time, you want your nails to look nice :-).
If the video isn’t there, click here to see it on Youtube.
I’ll post with more wool-y news soon. Until then, happy stitching!
Piece O Cake Blog 