I’m so happy to have this lovely quilt finished (50 x 58). I already blogged about it here so I won’t go into too much detail. I quilted this on my domestic machine (my beloved Juki). It may be one of the last quilts I quilt on that thing – as I’m a month or so away from getting my long arm. I really really can’t wait! To do this simple quilting I used a walking foot, especially because my batting was so puffy.

Here you can see how simple it was. Yes I used some of my deep Denyse Schmidt stash for the back. I am trying hard to use fabric I really love and pass what I don’t on to my guild.

As always I tucked one of my woven tags into the binding. I ordered 1,200 ten years ago and am still working through them (I used the World Wide Label on Etsy). I know this is probably not the level of label historians would prefer, as it doesn’t give much info, but I do thing it’s better than nothing. It’s not intrusive but hopefully someone would figure out I made it via the internet in the future… time will tell!

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with this one. Rarely do the quilts I made have a home in mind when I’m making them. I don’t do well with an assignments (probably why I have already made three quilts since my daughter’s said they each wanted one inspired by this artist). I pieced this quilt about four years ago. I’ve kept up the practice of keeping triangle scraps separate and have two bags ready to go for the next time I want to make one of these, I really do love it. What do you do with your triangle scraps?

I own a bridge now. Well Bj and I half own a bridge since we bought our vacation house on the other side of said bridge with our dear friends. It has proven to be a FANTASTIC quilt picture taking place

Not gonna lie though I’ve had some close calls with heavier quilts and the water…

And why is this quilt so heavy? It’s a “quilt as you go” type of quilt. So it has lots of tiny pieces, lots of quilting and lots of batting! I can’t stand to toss scraps of batting so I started making these. I am totally in disbelief that I’ve never blogged about these before since I have made many – and some very large ones at that!

I think showing the back will make it most obvious how this type of quilt is made, in case you’re not familiar with it. For me personally I utilize two sizes of scrap batting squares – ones about 15″ that I trim to 14″ after they are sewn on and a 10ish inch square I trim to 9.5 after sewing. To sew these type of blocks you flip and stitch, it’s very easy and addictive. I simply sew them together, as I would any other block. I do a very heavy steam press and I’ve never found this to be an issue.

Here you see two quilts in progress – would you believe one is monochromatic and the other is this bright crazy quilt? I find it much, MUCH easier to deal with value by flipping the camera app to mono and snapping a few to see if anything glares out to me as a problem. These bigger blocks have about a 6.5″ square in the middle of either dark/light and then the rest of the block is the contrast. It keeps the blocks interesting. I believe I first read about this in a translated Japanese quilting book, but I can’t seem to find it. Just know this original idea wasn’t mine! To finish this since it’s already quilted you have two choices – either stitch in the ditch to anchor the backing fabric or tie it. I’ve done both.

And about that house on the property with the bridge… I love to sew there so much! Often packing up for a few days looks like this as I am always OBSCENELY OPTIMISTIC about how much I will get done.

(Working on this quilt while watching wildlife and the creek – not too shabby!) This quilt ended up being perfect for a friend’s baby. A thick quilt like this makes an excellent play mat!

I haven’t really told anyone I’m blogging again… I’m not really doing it for anyone but me and all the avenues I used before to drive traffic to my blog (message boards, online groups, business newsletters) are pretty much gone from existence. I’m typing this on my cell phone for goodness sake – something I’d never even be able to think about when I started this thing over twenty years ago (but since I was pretty prolific back then you can read about me waiting in line for the first iPhone).

So obviously times have really, really changed since the early days when my friends (IRL) had actual conversations in my comments and EXCHANGED PHONE NUMBERS THERE (an actual thing I realized happened when I was going back through all my old posts and comments). That just seems so whimsical and early internet doesn’t it? I had thought about it for years (Bj saying… do we need to keep paying for this – meaning the domain mostly), what am I going to do with the blog? Hundreds of entries that would cost thousands of dollars to print and more if I wanted to include the comments. I couldn’t image one getting rid of the kind words people posted on the girls births for example. I also wondered… had I written things I’d regret? I was so young then, and not quite aware of the longevity of things online (yes if you’re reading this and you had a blog in the early part of the century it’s probably still around in some form – check the way back machine).

A few years ago I started going through the oldest entries in earnest. Trying to repair the damage done by a few blog moves (from Typepad – RIP) . Figuring out what pictures where missing, where sentences were cut in half and all of that. I also checked content and it was… fine? I complained about being two small for clothes I liked at one point (115 pound me – there are worse problems). But then I worried about what I had written about my kids. Did I use too many details? Did I exploit them in any way? And most importantly do they care about the content? Well it turns out children change quite a lot in the ten years between being a cute toddler and a fantastic teenager. They didn’t mind the old posts at all. Still I hemmed and hawed. Did I need to have a some big reason to blog again?

I asked Bj if it would be annoying to do all this work and then I never made a dime from the blog. His response was to ask me if I ever was trying to make money from the blog. I guess I wasn’t really. I had a few businesses and I did like to try to drive some traffic there from the blog but it was minimal. I think I’ve gotten less than $100 in all my years of Amazon affiliate links (if I ever figure out how to have an Amazon store with my favorite things I’ll put it here).

*Related to this. I wrote a novel a few years ago. I really missed writing. I had just come off a year of reading 400+ books and I wanted to take a stab at it. When I was done I had one friend offer to read it. I asked another one if she wanted to and she said, “I will when it’s done.” It was done I told her. “No I mean when it’s published,” she said. I explained I wasn’t planning on doing that. She asked why I wrote the book… just because (shrugging lady emoji).

A lot has happened, while some things remain the same. I’m still in my cottage and I still have my sweet family (Bj did have a couple super close calls that left him disabled and without an esophagus and it turns out those things are SUPER useful, trust me when I say you don’t want to be without one). I often pull up my blog to search for recipes or projects I’ve documented before (and have had friends tell me they do the same). In the end I figured the worst I ever wrote was repeating some of the things grandpa said to me. Some of my posts still have messed up pictures and I’ll slowly fix that as I come across them, but for the most part I just left everything. The path of least resistance and all of that.

I think I have lots more to say and if I’m the only one who ever reads it that’s ok with me. It’s like an a log of events that I’m putting on the web… (origin of the word blog here).