Rushing into April

Where do the days go? That old adage is true: "The older I get the faster time goes by." 

When I Googled that phrase, look what artificial intelligence came up with as an explanation: 

"The feeling that time speeds up as you age is a common experience, and it's linked to how our brains process information and experiences, with fewer new experiences and routines making time seem to pass faster."

Does "fewer new experiences" stand separate from "routines"? Does it mean that because we have routines, time seems to pass more quickly?

Or should that sentence have a comma and is meant to be understood as "fewer new experiences, and (fewer new) routines"?

AI appears to use poor sentence structure, and poor punctuation. 

Either way, I wholeheartedly disagree with AI's assessment of the phrase because I DO have new experiences, and change-up my routine activities, and still time passes quickly. 

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I had a "new experience" going to the Boomer Loomers group. I attended today for the second time, and was happy to turn in my round loom knitted donations of three baby caps and a pair of booties. 

My first knitting was the two plain caps, and then, using a YouTube video, I tried the "brick stitch" on the third cap (right). I then used my long-remember Brownies method of making a pom-pon with two cardboard circles. It worked nicely!

Those booties were knitted on a 12-peg round loom, a blue loom that I just got this week. The booties are not perfect, as they're not exactly the same size, but I'll keep trying to get my tension more even. 

I'm glad to have the 12-peg loom. Supposedly yarn daisies can be made with it, though I'd like to knit some face scrubbies. 

Using my 31-peg loom, I'm now knitting/purling a kid-sized cap. Yarn is this super-soft "Baby Bee Adore-A-Ball."

I continued to work on my paint chip challenge quilt, and have used-up one ball of Wonderfil Eleganza perle cotton that I wish I had more of - the greenish-yellow color EZ2118. And I almost-finished a second color - purple 506. 

Knowing I can add more quilting even after facing the quilt, I went ahead with facing.

For the four long strips at the sides, I eeked out 2"-wide pieces from backing fabric hanging off the quilt sides. But I had to resort to using a print for the 5" squares (folded into triangle shapes) for the four corners. In case you're interested, I use the facing method and tutorial shared on the We All Sew website, here. 

Finishing this paint chip challenge quilt by the April 15 deadline has been a priority, especially since learning last week that on April 14 I'll have my first of two cataract surgeries one week apart. Though I'm a bit apprehensive about having the procedures, I'm super-excited about having better vision, as cloudiness has continued to worsen in the six weeks since the opthamologist saw me. I'll be able to see more clearly, and that will be wonderful. 

In between other things, I'm hand-piecing Inner City blocks that go with me whenever it's appropriate. 

I also continue to listen to audiobooks. Since we're watching Will Trent on TV, I'm listening to the Will Trent books written by Karin Slaughter. The first book, Triptych, was pretty gruesome; I enjoyed book two, Fractured more. I'm on to Undone now. If you like police/detective - Georgia Bureau of Investigations - type books, you'll enjoy these. Will Trent is an interesting, flawed character. 

Linda

End of March

Didn't March fly by? It sure did for me. The good news is that this month begins a new trend I can carry through every month for the rest of 2025. I used-up more fabric than I brought in! Hooray!

The quantity of "out yardage" isn't very high because it reflects only two newly-made items. 

The first item that used-up most of the March total is my paint chip challenge quilt. I made (mostly raw edge appliqué) and sandwiched the top during March.

Fabric colors are Ruby + Bee salvia and night sky, (purples); and Painter's Palette carnation (pink); and lemon ice (yellow).

I have spent most of March hand quilting it with Wonderfil Eleganza perle cotton. 

I'm not quite finished with quilting, but I should see the piece faced and finished by the first week of April. It's due at Big Cypress Quilters on Tuesday, April 15. If you can think of a name for this, I'd appreciate suggestions!

The second use of fabric was to make this caddy cover for a Sterlite five-drawer container. The idea is to make the drawers portable with a zippered cover and webbing handles.

For cover fabric pieces, I sandwiched and quilted part of a improv quilt top that I wasn't happy with - begun during the pandemic as an along with the Boulder MQG.

I will fill the drawers and take it on the May retreat with Central Florida MQG.

The only other fabric use I'm counting in March was hand-piecing more Inner City blocks. I made 26 more blocks this month, so I'm up to 140 blocks made - 218 needed for the quilt top, and that doesn't count the smaller two-patch blocks needed to fill in around the four sides. 

Though it took me a while to put these all on the design wall, it was good to see which colors I have an abundance of - reds - and which colors are lacking - greens and yellows. I know what to cut more of next. 

As happy as I am about having pieced these blocks, and I'm lovin' how they look together - even hubs commented, "That's pretty cool!" - I know what lies ahead. Lots of time spent hand-piecing to join blocks together once they're all completed! 

Incoming this month wasn't fabric, but batting! After having to Frankenbatt the last two quilts I made, I'm happy to have this.

Not only was it on sale, but shipping was free - from Linda's Electric Quilt, in Texas.

The batt is a queen roll (93" X 30 yards) of Quilter's Dream Natural Cotton Request. As I always do, I'm splitting the roll and the cost with a friend. 

Saturday afternoon, I visited a new (to me) activity group called "Boomer Loomers." About 60 women and one man were in attendance. The best aspect of this group is generosity. They're 100 percent into accepting yarn donations, and 100 percent into knitting and crocheting 100 percent of that yarn into useable items to donate to charities - about five charities, by my count. 

I went to learn how to use my round knitting looms, and was given guidance by a very helpful maker from Minnesota, Mary, who showed me how to knit a baby cap. I took home yarn to make more that I will donate.

It's gratifying to learn something new, and know that what I make has a purpose.

As much as I want to learn more round loom knitting techniques, my open Saturday afternoons are few, already taken up each month with a Central Florida MQG meeting, a Central Florida MQG Sew-In, and Sumter County 4-H. 

In spite of busy-ness, or perhaps because of it - I have to keep my ducks in a row! - March was a productive month.

I'll leave you with the pretty view outside the rec center where Boomer Loomers met. We've had beautiful (low humidity) weather lately, and flowers are in glorious bloom.  

Linda

Book Scores

I checked-out many good books this month! In most cases, they were books others had recommended.

For my top two favorites I was on a long library waitlist. Then, wouldn't you know, each of them popped up on my Boundless app as available within three days of each other! Both are long listens too! Here One Moment is 15 hours 53 minutes; The Huntress is 19 hours 4 minutes. Each of them was worth every second. 

1. 4.8 - Here One Moment, Liane Moriarty
2. 4.6 - The Huntress, Kate Quinn
3. 4.5 - The Rom-commers, Katherine Center
4. 4.4 - Breaking the Silence, Diane Chamberlain
5. 4.4 - Nosy Parker, Lesley Crewe
6. 4.4 - More Harm Than Good #3 Kilteegan Bridge, Jean Grainger
7. 4.4 - When Irish Eyes Are Lying #4 Kilteegan Bridge, Jean Grainger
8. 4.4 - A Silent Understanding #5 Kilteegan Bridge, Jean Grainger
9. 4.2 - Every Moment Since, Marybeth Mayhew Whalen
10. 4.1 - Into the Water, Paula Hawkins
11. 4.0 - The Midnight Feast, Lucy Foley
12. 3.0 - The Husbands, Holly Gramazio

Here One Moment is an intriguing story, following several people who have been passengers on a flight from Hobart, Tasmania to Sydney, Australia. The narrator's talent and accent made the story captivating. I also admired the author's skill in offering the protagonist's profound thoughts about mortality and death.  

The Huntress is another story (like Kate Quinn's The Diamond Eye) that takes place in Russia during WWII and then jumps to post-war 1960's, where a team of people are tracking down Nazi war criminals to bring them to trial. Kate Quinn wrote other outstanding books like The Alice Network and The Briar Club, so if you haven't read any of these, put them all on your list!

I giggled aloud a few times while listening to The Rom-commers. It's about a woman who's a wanna-be screenwriter and a guy who is a screenwriter, but he needs help. From the get-go they're at odds with one another. But she's engaging, with self-deprecating good humor- a mostly light-hearted read. 

Nosy Parker is what's called a coming-of-age book about a 12 year-old girl, Audrey, who lives with her dad. It's 1967 and they're in Montreal, having just moved to the neighborhood. Audrey has to make new friends, who she finds are from diverse cultures, and for the most part, enjoyable to be around. Her primary objective though is to learn about her mother, who her dad won't talk about.   

Gotta recommend the entire Kilteegan Bridge series by Jean Grainger. Start with The Trouble With Secrets. Each book includes lovely pastoral scenes in rural Ireland and the small village of Kilteegan Bridge. The general store owners, the doctor, the rigid parish priest, young girls who think they're women, abuse, and love... all narrated with Irish accents. Each books is filled with real life scenarios, drama, and charm.

A few words about Every Moment Since... This is a fictional story about the night an 11 year-old boy went missing, and his family who have lived with not-knowing for 21 years. It touched me that in the forward, the author dedicates the book to several young boys whose disappearances have never been resolved. One boy mentioned is John Gosch, a Des Moines Register newspaper boy who disappeared in 1982. While preparing to deliver Sunday morning newspapers, he went missing from a neighborhood corner in West Des Moines... near where we lived from 1989 to 2012. 

I gave The Husbands a lower score because the whole storyline is fantasy - about a single woman who returns home from a night of drinking to find there's a man in her house claiming to be her husband. He's just come down from the attic, and when she sends him back up to get something for her, a different husband comes down the attic steps. Throughout the book, she's trying on new guys. Implausible. The ending made me feel "meh."      

Here are all the book covers, in score order.

Something Else

Every once in a while, a blog reader will let me know they've made a pattern or followed a tutorial on my blog. I always appreciate it when that happens, especially when they have pictures to share. 

Deb, who lives in Minnesota, saw my selvedge quilt on Pinterest, followed the picture to my blog, and used my October 2019 tutorial to make her own selvedge quilt. Colorful! Pretty!

Deb emailed to say, "I did not use all my selvedges, but most of my best colorful ones. I still have a basket full." Do you have a never-ending supply of selvedges too?

She did such a nice job, including those pretty quilted concentric circles. And don't we all love a black and white striped binding? So good!

If you'd like to make a selvedges quilt like Deb's, you can access my free pattern and tutorial HERE. When you make it, please share pictures with me so I can post them on my blog for others to see and enjoy. Thanks Deb for doing just that! 

Happy reading! Happy making! Linda

Active Week

This week has seen me hopping from one thing to another, and not completing any of them. No surprise, I suppose.

I've been preparing a presentation for our Central Florida MQG meeting on April 12. It's a big one... QuiltCon Review. Of course, having posted to my blog about QuiltCon, eight times, I have lots of material to sift through to create the program. It's just very time-consuming. 

Since Saturday, having finished machine quilting my paint chip challenge quilt, my number one sewing room focus has been hand quilting. It's due at Big Cypress Quilters on April 15. I'm pretty sure I can make the finish deadline, though I have to work on it every day.

I'm figuring out the quilting design as I go, using five colors of Wonderfil Eleganza (8-weight) and a Sue Spargo #3 Milliner's needle. I do not use a hoop when quilting. I'm loving how it's looking!

Each year I find I need to make a scrap quilt or two, to keep scrap bins at manageable levels. For several months I've been visiting Etsy to admire Diagonal Scrap Quilt, a pattern with three different scrap quilts by Maryline of @MaryandPatch who I've followed for a long time on Instagram.

This week I bought the pattern (a PDF download) and began cutting to make this version, though mine will be much larger. You really aren't surprised about that, are you? 

screen shot of Maryline's Black and White Diagonal Scrap Quilt

I'm making the black and white background pattern first because I have so many of these in my print stash. I cut 90 backgrounds to make a quilt that will be about 70" X 78". 

When the black and white version is finished, I will make this one. Isn't it great?! Super scrappy! 😍

screen shot of Maryline's Diagonal Scrap Quilt

Tuesday was my birthday and this was my pretty view walking into/out of Big Cypress Recreation Center. 

  

It was an "open sew" day because most of our members were on a quilt retreat. So I brought homemade cookies to share with nine friends who showed up - a lovely day later celebrated with dinner at a favorite Asian restaurant, and Publix moose tracks ice cream, a decadent treat!

 

I'm heading to line dancing soon, and then, this afternoon is an online event called Piecing Palooza, where ten quilters will give presentations on different topics, including scraps, piecing, curves, and raw edge appliqué. I'm looking forward to taking Cindy Grisdella's workshop, and hearing keynote speaker Maria Shell. 

I'm on the move! Linda

Party Time!

After spending hours writing and uploading pictures about QuiltCon, in eight blog posts, what I've been doing in my sewing seems mundane.

But since coming home, I am feeling inspired and energized to work on quilts that need making. 

In my End of February blog post, I was sewing down binding on Party Time!

I'm happy now to share this finished improv quilt which has already been to Show and Tell at Central Florida MQG, and Big Cypress Quilters chapter of Quilting Guild of The Villages. 

Party Time! is the result of two workshops with Cindy Grisdella - one in-person in December 2023, and the other virtually in September 2024. The center of this 64" X 69" quilt was pieced during the first workshop called Fearless Curved Piecing. The perimeter was pieced during the second workshop called Fabulous Freehand Curves.

Confetti dots (so-named by Cindy) in the borders were pieced. However, I thought more confetti was needed, so I fused and raw-edge appliquéd more squares. 

The quilt center is walking foot quilted in a sort of diamond-in-the square pattern. 

Borders were ruler quilted and free motion quilted. I added more confetti dots by simply ghost-quilting around a square of masking tape, quilting with about eight different colors of 50-weight Aurifil thread. 

Before adding binding, I did lots of measuring to ensure this quilt is on-the-square. I used my favorite, No Tails Binding: Mitered Corners by Machine binding method. 

Fabrics for a backing came from stashed prints, and a few orphan blocks. My bin of cast-aside orphan blocks seems to be perpetually full! 

It's always worth it, to me, to spend extra time making a large quilt that someone might actually use. Party Time! makes me happy! Linda

QuiltCon in Review: 8

With this blog post, I'm wrapping up reviews about about QuiltCon because I'm pretty sure I could keep posting pictures for days and days... like this picture of the award-winning quilt - MQG's Award of Excellence - Clamshell Jamboree made by Michelle Bartholomew @michellebartholomew of Washington.

Not only do I like her 43" X 58" quilt made for the Windham Ruby & Bee Challenge, but I admire her leaping skill!

Below are more of my favorites - though I've already seen on Instagram many quilts that I managed to completely miss at the show! They might have been favorites too!

A show-stopping quilter at QuiltCon was Lorelai Kuecker @pigs.in.a.blanket.quilting, a 15 year-old from Missouri whose quilt, Magnetized won first place in the youth category. Not only was her quilt beautifully executed, but she (and her mother) wore a different quilt-y outfit each day of the show. 

Here is Lorelai with 72" X 94" Magnetized. She explained that is was foundation paper pieced, and free motion and ruler work quilted entirely by herself. 

On Friday, just outside the quilt show floor I saw Lorelai and asked to take a picture. As I was taking the picture, I asked Lorelai "Who's your friend?" The person on the right is her mother! <forehead-smack> They made their outfits.  

Simply incredible! Though I can't imagine wearing such outfits anywhere except to a quilt show. 

Hundreds of QuiltCon attendees wore quilt-y, self-made clothing - patchwork jackets, appliquéd jackets, patchwork skirts, appliquéd jumpsuits, decorated flight suits, mended jeans... you name it, and someone was wearing it. One day, I wore the selvedge skirt I made in 2014 and last wore to QuiltCon Austin in 2015. I'm happy to say it still fits!

Below are some of the (only) 10 quilts displayed in the low volume exhibit (not judged). 

Whispering Peaks was made by Stephanie Bracelin @srbracelin of the Central Iowa MQG (no, I don't know her). 

The quilt measures 33" X 33", and was improv pieced and domestic machine quilted.

My friend, Susan Skatoff @susan_skatoff, is a new quilter who last year started the Palm Beach MQG chapter. She has in instinct for creating original designs. Here she is with her 41" X 42" Can You Relate? quilt. It was begun in a workshop with Maria Shell with the prompt, "If I were a quilt." Her response: "Dismissed. Over-looked.... Can you relate?" 

Susan is a longarm quilter; she quilted words... "listen, listen, listen."

It should be no surprise that this 30" X 41" Harmony Within quilt was made by Tzitzi Bejarano @tzitzibm of Mexico, whose other bias tape quilt Whispers of the Acacia appeared in the Windham Challenge quilt category. 

Once again I was struck by her simple, effective use of bias tape.

Not to be missed were transparency quilts. This was my favorite among them - Circle of Friends by Erin Case @eksrn2002 of Washington. 

It's 70" X 49" and beautifully executed. 

The description card said it is machine appliquéd, but I sure couldn't see her stitching!

Lectures

I attended five QuiltCon lectures.

Anna Maria Parry

1. David Owen Hastings: "Backing, Binding, Batting, Beauty," a unique way to assemble a quilt
2. Martiza Soto: "Improv Throughout Time"
3. Anna Maria Parry (formerly Horner): "Blueprint Quilting," which was a review of her new book Blueprint Quilting, presenting her process for creating quilts
4. Tara Faughnan: "Quilts As Art: Valuing Our Work"
5. Fiona Johnstone: "Breaking Out of the Quarter Circle." 

By far and away, the best presenters were David Owen Hastings, and Anna Maria Parry.

However, I learned the most from David Owen Hastings of Washington, and Fiona Johnstone of the UK. I didn't take any pictures of David, however, I have lots of pictures from Fiona's lecture. 

She has a mathematical mind that I couldn't keep up with. Hopefully, the many pictures and notes I took will help me create new designs with the Curvelets.

Fiona is the award-winner of this 56" X 48" Ruby Curvelets that earned the People's Choice award at QuiltCon 2023 in Atlanta.

Each block in Ruby Curvelets is 8" square and comprised of 64 ONE INCH blocks! During the lecture, Fiona explained her self-imposed rules for making Ruby Curvelets.

It's amazing to understand how many different shapes can be made with these little templates. Each FINISHED patch is 1" X 1"! 

This little quilt, made by Fiona, was on display (and for sale for $300) in Jen Carlton-Bailey's @bettycrockerass vendor booth. 

I took one workshop, and it was a six-hour one with Libs Elliott - Chaos with a Twist.

Libs, a Canadian, is an excellent instructor who has a fun way to approach quilt design. She assigns a number or letter to traditional blocks, then either draws a number (or alphabet letter) from a bag, or uses a computer random number generator, to select block designs to put together for a quilt. 

This is my result from the workshop - an incomplete section that's one-fourth of a quilt. I have lots more work to do to turn this into a finished quilt. 

Here is another student's progress, using a batik fabric with solids.

One of Libs' Chaos With a Twist quilts was hanging in a vendor booth. If you check out the Instagram hashtag #chaoswithatwist, you'll see more unique designs. 

Libs' workshop was worth my time and money, and I look forward to implementing her design method in a future quilt. 

Well, I think that wraps up my QuiltCon sharing. Thanks very much for putting up with my many posts about it.

Especially for those of you who've never attended QuiltCon, I hope my pictures of quilts and activities gave you a taste of what QuiltCon is like.

There's something about QuiltCon.

Hopefully I'll see you in Raleigh, North Carolina next year: February 19-22, 2026. The keynote speaker will be Hillary Goodwin @entrophyalwayswins.

Previous QuiltCon Review Links

• QuiltCon Review: 1 - general: friends, Waymo
• QuiltCon Review: 2 - handwork
• QuiltCon Review: 3 - appliqué
• QuiltCon Review: 4 - piecing
• QuiltCon Review: 5 - small quilts
• QuiltCon Review: 6 - Windham Fabrics Challenge
• QuiltCon Review: 7 - Community Outreach Challenge quilts
• QuiltCon Review 8  - youth, low volume, lectures, workshop

Linda