Chris texted me last night wanting to know if everything was okay because I hadn’t posted in several days – not like me I know but my trip Sunday was a challenge and I arrived at Mom’s tired!

It was a quick visit with some errands Monday and lunch with Kevin, sewing or I should say prepping on Tues and Wed since we cut out a quilt from a kit and started doing some tracing and fusing for one of Mom’s quilts. Unfortunately, our fusible web wasn’t cooperating – the batiks don’t seem to like Wonder Under so we had to scrap everything and we’ll get back to work on it my next visit. At least we got all the appliqué reversed on template plastic and some of it traced onto the Steam a Steam 2 (after testing it of course!).

I didn’t take a single photo of the scenery – it’s lovely here in the Shenandoah Valley but I can’t drive the mountains roads and snap photos too!

I also didn’t take any photos of Mom but I was looking at some old ones and came across this one of Mom with Chesty – we were living in Marietta at the time so it’s about 15 years ago … and look, we were working on quilts that visit too! We’re both so thankful that we’ve had this shared interest for the last 19 years!

It’s that time of year when we have to start dodging the afternoon showers … but at least the temps aren’t in the mid 90s like last month.

We had a light sprinkle on the way up to Sail but the afternoon shower blew through quickly as we were having lunch. You can see the clouds behind Keith as we’re leaving.

And the blue sky on the way home!

I’m going to crochet a bit, pack for my trip, and then it will be time to cook dinner. Keith has requested Jambalaya again so he’ll have leftovers to eat while I’m gone.

It’s not assembled yet but I’m making progress on the Layer Cake Hourglass blocks. I don’t talk a lot about my health here and I’m not complaining but one of the things I struggle with post surgery and with the suppression therapy is difficulty focusing … it’s not that I never made mistakes before but I can tell you, I spend more time with my seam ripper these days.

I snapped a final photo of Maureen’s Churn Dash quilt before packing it up – quilted, bound, washed, and ready to use!

I had several questions about the Sashed Tumblers – I’ve got some quilt notes on the website if you’re curious about how it was pieced. If I made it again, I’d use full tumblers on the top and bottom rather than the half tumblers – in fact, I gave that half tumbler die away right after making this top! It’s not hard to bind the irregular tumbler edges.

Now for something gross – we’ve had an invasion of flies the last couple days … ugh!! We had our pest control company out – we’re not sure what’s causing it but we’ll have them come back out and check under the house just in case something crawled there and died. There’s no odor now but we did have something stinky when we got back from the Hatteras trip – it faded really quickly and I’d wondered if it was just from the house being shut up and the A/C being put low while we were gone.

The good news is that a) there are way fewer today than yesterday and b) since I’m leaving Sunday morning it will be Keith’s problem to figure out what the problem is! Luckily, they’re mostly concentrated in one room because it’s bright and sunny there and they’re gathering near the windows. I put some fly paper up and we’re keeping the fly swatter handy but we’re also closing off as much of the house as we can!!

I got a backing made and a top loaded on the longarm but it will wait until tomorrow for quilting … I trimmed my sister’s churn dash and have the bright, scrappy binding machine stitched and now I’m being really, really nice and hand stitching it down for Mom!

It’s a long skinny quilt but that’s what Maureen wanted – I won’t call her picky but she knows exactly what she wants so a long skinny quilt is what she’s getting!!

I don’t have instructions posted on this one but the block size is 9 inches ( 9.5 inches with seam allowances) and the sashing is cut 2.5 inches. There’s a small border also cut 2.5 inches. Eventually, I’ll get some brief notes up on the website for it.

I’ve shared this before but thought I’d share a discount code for those of you who haven’t tried Chatbooks! I use the app on my iPhone or iPad.

I love creating books from our family trips and being able to share them with everyone. I just created and ordered the book for our Mother’s Day trip to Hatteras.

I spend the extra $5 for the hardcover version but even with that they’re just $15 for 30 pages and I’ve been really happy with the quality of the books. Use the coupon code below for a discount on your first book.

MARYJOHNSON-FHYT

It’s great having books that celebrate these wonderful memories!

Thank you all for the birthday wishes … we’ve had another great day starting with a 13.5 mile bike ride. It’s such a pretty place to ride! And then, we spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool.

Who just celebrates just a day? How about a weekend… or even a week?!

My birthday is tomorrow but Keith took me out to dinner tonight … Armani’s … one of my favorite places!

A wonderful dinner and a beautiful sunset!