I have a lot of great quilting friends.
There’s the group of women I sew with on Tuesday nights. On any given Tuesday night, anywhere between 8 and 20 of us get together and sew and quilt. This Sit and Sew started at Dragonfly and now that the store has closed, we are continuing to sit and sew at Karen’s house. This tightly knit group of women were the core that started the High Point Quilt Guild.
Which brings me to my next group of quilting pals – my local guild. This group of women and men have an “official meeting” once a month, but a good number of us end up together once or twice a month to quilt, too. We’re a small and fairly new guild, so this too, is a great group of friends.
These folks are my rock…my support group…my therapy session…
However, there is one group of women that I have quilted with since 2001. This is a bee that sprang from Hancock’s Block of the Month Club. We call ourselves the Quilting Cuties. Once Hancock’s disbanded the BOM, we continued to meet to quilt and chat. This is the group of ladies I have known the longest. Since Hancock’s closed, we’ve gone down in number from seven to four, but this group is the group that knows me best.
And this is the group that is probably the most honest with me. Always.
So when Lisa, a member in good standing of the Quilting Cuties, called me out on last week’s blog, well…I had to listen. Because Lisa may be blunt, but she is always the most honest. Concerning last week’s blog, she commented, “Well, that was cheery.”
I went back and read it. And she was right. It wasn’t sunshine and roses and unicorns. But at the time, it did reflect my raw feelings about our present quilt world. It has collectively been turned upside down and inside out in many ways. However, perhaps I shouldn’t have reflected that on my readers.
So I do apologize and hope I didn’t discourage or offend anyone because that certainly wasn’t my intent. I just needed to regroup, reorganize, and re-orient myself. And I did. I finished a quilt top this week, but I can’t show it because it’s a present for someone that regularly reads my blog. I ordered the backing today and as soon as it gets in, it’s going on my long arm and will be quilted.
Speaking of which, I’m no professional at it at all, but learning how to deal with Loretta has been tons of fun and I’m getting better. I’m learning what thread she likes and which kind she spits back at me. I’ve learned to pantograph reasonably well, but find it rather boring. I am loving freehand work. I’ve yet to try rulers, but have purchased a few several and as soon as I can book another class with Shelle and/or Janet, I want to learn these. This is my latest pantograph work, although it’s kind of hard to see in this picture.
And I’m almost through with all my Farmer’s Wife blocks!
These were fun…
These were a bit more challenging…
And I fell in love with the colors on these…
These blocks are 6.-inches unfinished. But after working on Jane for so many years, they feel huge. And anytime I work with a 12.5-inch unfinished block — it’s ginormous to me. I’ve only got 15 more blocks to go and I can start putting this together. I love the Fig Tree fabrics and a huge thank you goes to Jill for “plumping” my stash with her leftover Fig Tree scraps.
The weather folks are calling for 6 to 8 inches of snow here tomorrow and Saturday. I’ve done my milk/bread/toilet paper/wine/coffee run, so after I finish some household chores (because I really need to clean the house since the Christmas tree is down and packed away), it looks like it’s quilting all weekend! Hooray!
Love and Stitches,
Sherri and Sam
