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. 

2 Years in the Making

Around June, I resolved to clean out my huge pile of UFO's. The clean out process involved one of the BEST DECISIONS EVER for finishing UFO's, which might be obvious to all of you but was not obvious to me. Are you ready?

Send the quilts out to be long armed.

I hate basting quilts. HATE. I hate it enough to not finish quilts once the top is complete but I always thought about long arming as being for those huge quilts that I can't handle on my machine.

No no no. I think the best use of long arm services is for those quilts that make you want to shoot yourself in the foot!!

And so, I got to work on my pile. This quilt isn't my oldest, but it does date back to July 2010.  I won't lie, finishing this quilt top was akin to poking out my eyeball (Just one, I don't desire to lose my vision). But I finished. And I'm glad I did.

The quilting was performed by Emily of Emerson Quilting, who did an amazing and FAST job. I asked for the famous Denyse Schmidt quilt pattern and she executed it perfectly! Emily is just starting out and has fair prices, excellent customer service, and an astonishing turn around time. Seriously, she turned around two quilts in about a day and a half, I think. Her site doesn't show a lot of options but if there is something you want just ask. She is super easy to work with!

I took both the quilts on vacation with me but in ten days I only managed to find time to bind one of them :). I guess I was too busy floating down the river in one of these everyday.

This is also my first and only quilt with white! I know that I'm way late to the white bandwagon - I think it left the station a year or two ago, but - wow - white looks great in quilts!

I hope you are having the best summer. Thanks for stopping by!

Specs:
Finished Size: 60"x60"
Fabric: Kona White, various HR and DS scraps. 
Block: Dutch Windmill. It's just HST's. I copied this amazing quilt. It's the first one I had ever seen and still a favourite.

{Finally} And the winners are...

Ugh, I was able to turn off comments on Monday but then Blogger kicked me out and I haven't been able to get back in until now! Thank you for all of your bread suggestions! I think I responded to everyone, even all of you no-reply bloggers (I'm just learning about that. As I've said before, I'm totally not a savvy blogger).

I can't believe how many yummy suggestions there were. So many that I didn't feel right picking five so I used the random number generator instead. But the random number generator spat out 4 of you who are no-reply bloggers. So sad. I decided to revert back to my original plan to choose the winners. So here they are...

Heather - Her favourite is an apple cheddar scone from Smitten Kitchen. Sounds Delish!
Java Diva - Inside out Carrot Cake Muffin. HELLO! You had me at cream cheese frosting.
Strawberry Patch - Lemon Curd Muffins. Mmmm.
H20girl - Bread dipped in brewer's yeast. This just sounds strange to me. So it's a winner!
Diann - Cinnamon Buns. Who doesn't love a good gooey cinnamon bun?

Thanks for joining the zakka along. I hope you're having as much fun as I am. And if you haven't already, head on over to (one of my favourite people) BettyCrockerAss's blog to see her SUPER cute project for this week and enter her give away!!

New Quilt Top!

I'm back from vacation and even managed to sew the fastest quilt top I've ever made! I'm not thrilled with my fabric choice - Picnics and Fairgrounds by Denyse Schmidt. I think the line shines as small patchwork but I still like the top. And it only took a couple hours to sew a king size. Talk about instant gratification! The pattern is Turning Twenty and I highly recommend it for a fast quilt with big pieces. But I recommend using larger scale prints. I also bound a quilt, which I'll blog about later.

Thank you so much for all the bread suggestions and nice comments about the bread basket! I'm sorry that the pictures weren't fantastic. I didn't count on having no internet OR cell reception while I was gone and had a hard time getting everything uploaded. I also feel like a nob for not including the name of the bread basket designer! She is Rachel Roxburgh of Roxy Creations. I am so sorry, Rachel. Your pattern rocks!

I just want to remind everyone that I will be drawing names tomorrow for the zakka along give away so you still have a chance to win the best thread on earth (Aurifil), awesome yarn dyed Essex linen and a skein of Cosmo floss to sample! To enter, leave a comment on this post.