My Design Wall, Lately

Now that most of the excitement and chat about QuiltCon has died down (it was the topic of our March 9 Central Florida MQG meeting), I've been focusing on quilty obligations - teaching, preparing to teach, organizing a Mod Quilt Retreat, and prepping for quilt shows - and time in my sewing room... the latter of which has been very limited due to the aforementioned obligations!

Still, at least two UFOs will be off my "On the Horizon" list (a tab, above) in 2015. I pulled out the the finished quilt center of this Blogger's BOM, begun in 2011, and added the pieced border blocks, most of which were pieced for me by quilters in the Mid-Century Modern Bee. I had to do some fiddly sewing to make the corners work out.

Strawberry Fizz and Lime Pop - 79" X 79" 

And then, for the back, I joined a few trial-and-rejected pieces,

siggy blocks from those previously mentioned bee friends, 

an extra block, and my own homemade label. 

The strip I cobbled together was inserted horizontally in the fat back, about one-third from the bottom.

Now is the inevitable question: How will I quilt it?

On the teaching front, it's hopping! Last week I taught "No Tails Binding" (see my tutorial for this binding method on this blog) to quilters in Quilting Guild of The Villages. As is inevitable when teaching, we all learned a couple things related to this method:

1) it's not a good idea to try, for the first time, sewing with black fabric, either in the little quilt or as binding; and,
2) when machine sewing binding points, it's easier to see with an open-toed sewing machine foot.

I'm so pleased that the quilters caught on. Now, mostly by word-of-mouth, I have four more of these classes of 20 students, scheduled into May!

Quilting Guild of The Villages quilters at Sterling Heights Rec Center

I'm happy to share that "Ad Libbing" has been juried into MQX (Machine Quilter's Expo) in Manchester, New Hampshire, April 8-11. And, it's been entered into two more shows.

After chatting with two certified quilt judges while at QuiltCon (they were not judging QuiltCon), Lora went to the trouble of removing the previously-sewn length-of-grain binding, and replaced it with bias binding. We met last Friday so I could have Ad Libbing to prep and ship. Lint and fuzz has been removed, the label covered (solid orange fabric), paperwork and a check for returning it home, and packaging are all done.

Monday afternoon was the second of three Beyond First Time Quiltmaking classes - everyone's making a Quick Curve Ruler quilt, and it's fun to see the prints and colors.

Tuesday I'm leading an all-day Free Motion quilting workshop.

All this quilty stuff is great, but I need to keep up my strength! How about an energy ball? These are Key Lime Coconut Energy Bites by Spoonful of Flavor.

They're full of healthy stuff - almonds, cashews, dates - though when I didn't have enough dates, I improvised by adding diced raisins. If you're looking for a non-chocolate sort of pick-me-up, they're pretty good.

Also, this week I become eligible for social security. I've gotta look for the silver lining when I get that old. A monthly check suits just fine! Linda