Back in the swing of things

With what feels like a wave of a wand, summer is over.  It is oddly September.  My kids went back to school last week.  I feel behind.  I am behind, but hopefully will do a little catch up in the next month.

Last week, or maybe the week before, with the prospect of a huge quilt going on my frame (you will see in a moment), I loaded up a couple of samples.  The first is one for my Dense & Dainty fillers class, which I will be teaching again at MQX Midwest next month.  I changed the background fabric as well as how I will approach teaching the fillers over the last show, and wanted to get a sample made that reflects the class project.

The fabric my April class used is this cute Arabesque print, which I also designed, but despite being unique and playful, and similar to my sample, it proved more challenging for some students to stick fillers into these spaces.  Hopefully, my change is a good one.

The other sample I made will go with my templates (aka "Ruler the Roost") class, and is actually for an article coming out next year.  It is all about the small circle templates that are available.  I love getting to "play", and just mindlessly quilt.  This is just a snippet of the sampler. 

 Earlier in August, my daughter and I had a day project -- yes, a quickie 1-day project to make a quilted donut pillow!  First we loaded up her piece of donut fabric.  She found this in Paducah, and I honestly had no idea what she would do with it.  It is quilted with easy straight lines -- channel locks to the rescue.  The quilting took her about 20 minutes.

Then I helped her cut up the minkie, and make velcro facings (whoops, just remembered we still need to add the velcro!), and she stitched these on her machine.

 At most an hour later...viola!...a finished soft & snuggly pillow.  Happiness.

I have started adding applique to these log cabin blocks.  The flowers are all pink and orange, and to keep them from totally blending into the logs, I have added a good bit of teal and shades of green. Hope it does its job.  Two down, three to go.  Then the wide appliqued borders.  Hope to get these actually designed on paper soon so I can have the pattern for prepping the appliques.  Too many other things eating away at my time lately!

That fact is not completely a bad thing though.  I had a couple days last week dedicated to "tidy up" on my next show quilt, which will debut at MQX Midwest next month.  I think it is done... How The Twisted Sister does is now out of my hands.

My baby turned 10 a week ago.  She always has crazy birthday cake ideas for me to make happen. Someday I will go back and post photos of all of them.

On Saturday, I took my 12 yr old away to the ocean for some one-on-one mom time.  We spent the afternoon climbing on the rocks at the ocean, and searching for treasures.  I put on 10000 steps, so it was no shabby workout either!

This ginormous 106" client quilt has been on my frame a week now.  She requested dense custom, and boy is that what I am quilting.  It might still have 2-3 more days left, and then I have 2 pillow shams to quilt.  I am at the point where my psyche is screaming "Get Me Done!".

 It's a busy month at the shows too, which I am trying hard not to think about.  I have 2 at the Wisconsin Quilt Expo, which is this week.  There are two at AQS Chattanooga, next week.  Then the week after there is another show.  Sometime in the next 2 weeks, we will hear about Houston awards.  I am really trying to forget that fact.  Early October is PIQF, another AQS show, then MQX.  It is busy!