I'm sorry I've been MIA for so long!

Well, way back in mid-August I promised pictures of some of the quilty stuff I'd been doing.  Not to make excuses, but one thing and another conspired to keep that from happening.  I was sick, then I was out of town, then I was sick again, then DH (my quilt and quilt-top holder) was out of town, and well, then I just got crazy busy with life stuff.

I'm not sure if I can put a picture in this post, I'll have to see if putting the URL from a Flickr image will work.  My photos are on an external hard drive, which is where I'm not.  So if pictures have to wait, then it'll be tomorrow or later this week for that.

So, what have I been doing?  Well, I'm glad you asked!  I've been on three quilting retreats this year, in May, July, and September.  I was supposed to go on one in February, but between moving and my mother's death, I decided to miss that one.  I can't even remember what I worked on in May, which is why I should really post here more regularly.  In July, and again in September, I was working on a fun collection of blocks.  More on them in my next post, because that's a bit of a long story and will be picture-heavy.  For now, if it works, here's a picture of the bed I almost always end up with at the place I go on retreat:



Hey, it worked!  Isn't that a nice thing, to come to a quilting retreat, and sleep in a bed with a quilt on it?  And made by the mother of the owner of the place, no less.  She sometimes will come over for a while after dinner and sew with us, though the last time she didn't.

So, the project that I've been working on at the last two retreats has been really fun.  Have you seen the Garden Patch Cats patterns by Helene Knott?  Well, a woman I "know" from Ravelry, Sue Hauser, owns an online quilt shop called Alderwood Quilts.  She's been wanting to offer these blocks as a block-of-the-month program.  The problem is, she's much more of a dog person, and while she could see that the blocks were fun and whimsical and kinda cute, she really didn't want to make them.  Well, we got into a bit of a conversation on other matters (and she already knew I was also a quilter), and she had the idea to ask me if I'd like to make the sample blocks for her.  She cut and sent me kits with the patterns, I fused the appliques down and did a tiny zigzag stitch around them (I would normally do a blanket stitch, but that seemed more "primitive" than these blocks are, to me), and sent them back to her.  She's going to do the embroidery embellishment, and attach the crystal or pearl for the "sparkle" in the eye, and take her photos.  Then I'll make them up into finished items, and send her photos of those so she can share them with her customers.  It's win-win for us -- she didn't have to make the blocks, and I didn't have to buy the patterns ;-)  I think I've done 23 blocks, and there are more coming out, I know.  So this will be a bit of an ongoing project, too.

Tomorrow, I'll show you the pictures of the blocks as they were when I finished my part.  For now, I have to run some errands, and get back to my sewing.

Thanks for stopping by to play.  Come back again soon, and I'll promise to be here with new stuff to share.