Well, today begins the official time on the Spring Market floor, and I just got an email from the ladies with the first thing they’ve added to the possibility list. Woodland Christmas is by Bunny Hill and uses a 3 Sisters line of fabric. We will probably be starting this program in November.

As many of you know, I spent the last week teaching on a Civil War Cruise hosted by Stitchin Heaven

It was great!  We headed out on Sunday from Galveston aboard the Mariner of The Seas.  Royal Caribbean is a great cruise line.  I was very impressed with the ship, the service we received and…of course..the food.  I’m happy to report that I didn’t gain any weight–but it was a struggle.

Monday was a day at sea so I got to do my first class.  My students were learning Pioneer Braid.  Many of them didn’t realize how easy this quilt is to do.  This picture was taken about 3:00PM that day.  You can see that they were well on their way.

There were 76 students and three teachers.  The other teachers were Paula Barnes and Jerry Stube.  Each student stayed in her place and the teachers rotated.  Sewing machines were provided so all they had to bring were their sewing supplies.  Pre-cut kits were available for purchase and there at their stations when they arrived.   The classroom was open for sewing 24 hours and several took advantage.

Tuesday we arrived in Cozumel.   We didn’t have any plans for that port but got off the ship long enough to purchase a few treasures.  I got a lovely necklace.  I probably paid more for it than I should…but I really like it so that’s okay.

Wednesday we landed in Grand Caymen.  Candy, Ed, Kirk, and I went for a tour in a glass bottom boat.  We saw coral, lots of fish, and a sunken vessel from around 1901.  One of the guides got into scuba gear and fed the fish bread so they would cluster around the boat.  Oh…and I also bought a bracelet as well as  Chanel No 5 cologne (it was really cheap so I couldn’t resist!).

Thursday we were in Jamaica.  Candy and I toured a plantation that was built about 1790.  The scenery was breath taking.  We were served High Tea…which was a little disappointing.  The tables were set up outside but ours was a sunny spot and I kept worrying that Candy was getting too much sun.  She has light skin.  I almost never burn though so I was fine.

Friday was another sea day so we were back in the classroom.  It was so much fun seeing folks I knew from the shop and meeting new friends.

One of my students that day was making her Pioneer Braid from William Morris fabrics.  I can’t wait to see how it turns out–and wish I had time to make one like it!

Friday night we started having some, shall we say, less than smooth seas.  This lasted until around 4:00PM on Saturday.  It wasn’t awful, but some folks were a little seasick.  I’m happy to report that it didn’t bother me.  I was glad when it settled back down, however.

Okay….just one more picture.  I love the towel animals that our steward made.  This monkey was hanging over our bed.  We also had an eel and a bat.  What fun!

Kirk went with me.  He was able to find things to do while I was teaching and our evenings were free to enjoy all the shows as well as free time when we were in port.

I’ve been invited back next year to teach again.  The dates are March 16-23rd on the Navigator of the Seas.  Please consider joining me.  It’s tons of fun!

Judy Scoggins! You are the winner of our International Women’s Day contest. If you will email us with your shipping address, we will get this kit out to you.

We’re gearing up to get the patterns for the First Ladies Block of the Month ready to ship to shops across the country.  It takes a lot of work behind the scenes to get one of these programs off the ground.  I thought I’d share a little about what we’re doing.

This is David from Gingerbread Press He oversees the whole operation.  Kirk and I visited him today to give the final okay on the colors for the patterns.  They have already begun printing the black and white pages.  They’re printed four to a page, then cut and collated (all by big machines).

These stacks are not even all of the inside pages!  They won’t finish printing all of them before the end of the week.  We order thousands at a time.  Thank goodness they have room to store the patterns until we need them!  There would be no room left in the shop for all the boxes if we had to store them ourselves.

It takes months and months of work by many people to take an idea for a quilt to the final project–and what a journey it is!

Ever had one of those days?  You know…everything just keeps going wrong.  We’ve had several lately…and if you ask Laura, she’ll tell you it’s been going on about a week.

When folks started arriving for work last Thursday, three came in and commented that they smelled gas.  When I got there, I couldn’t confirm it because my allergy to mountain cedar was so bad I didn’t have a sense of smell.  Laura called the gas company and the gentleman came within a few minutes.  Everything was fine in the shop so he went to the alley just to be sure.  Five minutes later, he came back and told us to evacuate immediately (don’t unplug anything and don’t use your phone–just get out).  Needless to say we did exactly what he said to do!  Evidently there was gas under our building.  They ended up having to dig up the street to find a big pipe that was leaking.  Our neighbor across the street at My Father’s House made the sign you see so we could leave for a while (maybe he was tired of seeing us sitting on the bench in front of his store!).  We got back inside around 2:30 that afternoon, but by then we were about 50 orders behind for the day.  Who would have known that we’d have a gas leak on the day our online sale started. Friday was spent trying our best to get all the ordered shipped.

Monday wasn’t too bad except Laura had to take her son to the doctor (he just turned 13 and has grown 3 inches and 25 pounds in three months!) so she felt out of kilter when she finally arrived. On her way home, she had a blowout.  Thank goodness for her cousin’s husband who rescued her by finding the little spare tire (Laura couldn’t find it…but then she probably couldn’t have put it on if she had found it!).

Tuesday morning, one of the computers we use to check customers outs died an untimely death.  That meant getting a new one as quickly as we could.  Laura spent the first half of her morning (after having to get new tires) trying to light the pilot on our heater because we decided it was just too cold to stand.  Then the new computer came in and she spent about 3 hours trying to get the receipt printer set up.  We finally had to take the computer and the printer to our trusty computer people to get it running.

Today, she was finally able to get back to her “real” job and put a lovely new line of fabric called Virginia by Windham online.

Wednesday is over and I’m pretty sure Laura is hoping that nothing else happens before she can have a day off!  Let’s hope the universe agrees.

Last week I started (well, really I restarted) working on reproducing another quilt from my collection.  I began this one several years ago and did the four center blocks but never got around to the border.  I think I was planning on designing a different border from the one on the quilt.  I pulled it out last week and decided I liked the border that was on it just fine.

Baxter follows me upstairs sometimes.  He usually just sniffs around until he realizes there’s nothing for him to eat (although he’s been known to eat fabric as I said earlier).

This time he found a nice cozy spot and fell asleep.  This is the quilt I’m working on now.  What you can see is the border that I’ve decided is really okay.  It’s going to take a little longer since I was doing it by hand and want to finish it that way.  Most of the time I do machine applique now because we’re in a hurry to get something out there for you folks to buy.  I do hand work every night to relax so I’m looking forward to finishing this one—and I’ll post a picture when it’s done.

What do you do when you’re on voice rest and not supposed to talk?  If you’re me….and you’re tired of reading…you consider cleaning the closet in your sewing room.

That’s just what I did last week–and I’m really glad.  I came across some blocks that I’d started a couple of years ago but put aside because I wasn’t pleased with the way they were looking.  That’s when I remembered a quilt I’d purchased several years ago.

It has 20 baskets with different botanical objects in each one.  I think the reason I stopped was because I wasn’t at all sure I had the colors of the basket blocks correct.  I took it to the shop, and (with more talking than I was really supposed to be doing) we studied and studied it.  The final conclusion was that the baskets were all done in brown and purple.  My argument that the brown was a fugitive green or red didn’t hold water once we’d picked in the seams.  It was definitely brown.  The other fascinating thing was the fact that the alternating blocks were definitely purple.

I know you can’t tell from the pictures…but we’re certain.  I started right away writing the pattern for the basket blocks.  Trudy is testing the pattern as I write.  I’ve drawn all the flowers for the blocks and can’t wait until I can get started on them.  I will do them by machine (well, actually I’ll do the fusing and Vanya will do the machine work).  I would prefer to do them by hand…but there’s just not enough time if I want this pattern out this year.

We’ve been collecting greens and reds (okay…I guess we’ve really been hoarding them) so Susan pulled them out and we got to work.  I don’t know if you can tell from the other pictures, but there are 15 large leaves scattered across the quilt.  They’re big, so we can use some of those great stripes we have.

There were four blocks that were the same…a simple tulip.  I decided to add three of my own design so that all 20 would be different.  I’ll be interested to see if you can figure out which were mine.

We’ll be calling the quilt Forgotten Treasure.  Once I get a couple of blocks done (in the next day or two) I’ll post them so you can tell me what you think.