On Making New Quilty Friends or How Instagram Made my Summer Even Better

I thought last weekend would never come. Now I can't believe it went so fast. Jules, Nicole, and I rented a house in the central California Coast town of Morro Bay.

We got together for a weekend of chatting, olives, cheese, homemade liqueur, zoku popsicles, french toast cake (I repeat: french. toast. cake.), lots of laughing, gorgeous views, and even a tiring amount of sewing.

It was wonderful.

At first I was hesitant about going. Would they like me? (I think so) Am I cooler online than in person? (emphatic yes!) Could I control my snorts? (sadly, no).

I'm so very glad I went and made new friends and learned new things. And I'm glad we decided to make it an annual getaway. I think it will be even more fun next time because we'll already know each other so I won't be so reserved (I'm not good the first time round :)

We decided to do a pillow swap and I scored! Nicole made me an awesome mendo pillow. I love the heath - it's the perfect blender! Jules thrilled me with a selvedge pillow. I adore her selvedge quilts. Adore. Don't worry, they were only on the ground for a second!

I'm just as enamored with the backs! Nicole's pillow is special because she gushed all weekend about how the dots are her favourite fabric. So now I think of her even more when I see the back (I don't have a large enough pillow form yet, so it's not filled out). I learned something great from the back of Jules' pillow - quilt the flap! It's sturdy and, well, brilliant!

I made Jules a stem pillow based on this pattern. I think my choice of a primarily white pillow shows that I don't have kids. The prints are from Salt Air. Jules made most of a beautiful tumblr quilt top out of Salt Air while we were there. It's SO pretty all together - beachy and fun.

For Nicole, I made a plus and x pillow but shrank the blocks down so that the pillow would finish at 16". I hated the blocks when I put them on my design wall and even decided to scrap the pillow all together. Luckily Darci (another awesome friend made through instagram) talked me into finishing it.  I'm SO glad that I did because it looked great after quilting.

On the sewing front, I cut and sewed almost a complete quilt top while we were there! What should have been a super quick sew was made painful due to this strange mathematical vortex in Morro Bay. Maybe you've been there and have experienced it?  The quilt ended up twin size instead of lap size. How, I will never know.  I'll blog the details soon.

That's pretty much it in a very brief nutshell. Here's to new friends!  They are the best.

Thanks for stopping by.