January OMG, Smashed to Smithereens

Well, folks, my January OMG (One Monthly Goal) was to make four more sampler blocks for my Retro Building Blocks quilt.  I made six!

Four Retro Building Blocks Added to the Design Wall...

Plus This One...

...And Also This One

I know that making six blocks in a whole month might seem like a pretty weak goal, but I also completed a vintage quilt repair for a client, quilted several charity tops for our guild's outreach to local pediatric hospitals, and I just finished quilting a huge, gorgeous Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt for a client that I am DYING TO SHOW YOU -- but I can't because she reads my blog and she deserves to see her finished quilt in person before I show it to everyone on the Internet...  (You know who you are!  😉)

I also ordered and received all of the Kona Solids yardage that I was short on for the Retro Building Blocks sampler, and I've prewashed all of it so that it's ready to go.  Now that I'm caught up with customer commitments, my next order of business will be to cut and piece the Rainbow Mork Suspenders borders and set them aside.  I just want to make 100% certain that I get those long, skinny strips I need out of the yardage before I start cutting into what's left for my remaining blocks.

I'm linking up with the One Monthly Goal finish party at Elm Street Quilts!

Goal Posts for November: The IntelliQuilter is Coming!!

Good morning!  It's Election Day in the United States, but we've already voted early so there's nothing to do about that except wait and see what happens...  With civic duties already completed and no further power to affect the election outcome, I may as well shift my focus to what I CAN control: Quilting goals for the week and for the fresh, crisp month of November!

This Week's Goals:

Letter Home Monogram Baby Quilt Nearly Quilted

1. I'm still working on finishing up the last of my October goals, my Letter Home Monogram baby quilt.  I've finished quilting another row since the photo above; just didn't get a picture when I left the machine for the night.  This would have been finished yesterday, had I not spent THREE HOURS on the phone with Apple Tech Support yesterday afternoon, attempting to resolve the Mystery of Why My iPad Can't Install an iOS Update Without a Factory Reset...  Anyway, with just a couple more hours of quilting today, then trimming, labeling, and binding, this little quilt will be ready to ship off to the one-month-old baby for whom it's intended.  

Look What's Coming TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!

2. OH MY GOSH, you guys -- today is Quilter's Christmas Eve at my house, because FINALLY after waiting for over two months since I placed the order, I have a tracking number for my IntelliQuilter computer robotics system that has been put on a truck in Ohio and is cruising down the highway, headed straight to ME!  According to the tracking number, it should arrive by noon tomorrow.  We'll be self-installing the system, so that's my second goal for this week: Installing, adjusting, fine-tuning and testing the new computer robotics system for my APQS Millennium machine.

One Monthly Goal for November

Getting comfortable with the new iQ system is my OMG for November.  I've already gone through all six hours of training videos that my dealer provided, but once I have my system installed I'll want to go back through those lessons hands-on and work through the exercises with my machine.  I'll be quilting up some practice e2e/computerized pantograph designs and playing with the density and scale as well as experimenting with some computerized custom quilting.  Woo-hoo!  

I'm linking up today's post with:

TUESDAY

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

·       One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts. 

WEDNESDAY

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

·       Put Your Foot Down at For the Love of Geese

·       Free Motion Mavericks with Muv and Andree

Goodbye, October 2020! Baby Quilt Update (and Happy Halloween)

 Well, October is officially a wrap.  The trick-or-treaters have gone home and my husband, younger son, and I have set ourselves to the task of finishing off the leftover candy.  I've powered off my long arm machine for the night, even though I'm only 2/5 of the way through quilting the baby quilt that was supposed to be Part Two of my One Monthly Goal for October.  Here's what Charlie's quilt looks like so far:

My Letter Home Monogram Baby Quilt is 2/5 Quilted

I loaded this quilt on my frame upside-down, so I'm actually quilting it from the bottom up.  There are five rows of 8" blocks in this quilt and the first row took me awhile because I only had a fuzzy idea about how I was going to quilt this one.  I wanted to keep the quilting fairly light and open, similar to the density of the pantograph design I quilted on my October OMG Part One quilt (below), but this baby brother quilt is getting SID, light ruler work, and a little bit of free motion rather than E2E pantograph quilting.  

Big Sister's Quilt, Aiming for Similar Quilting Density in Baby Brother's Quilt

I don't normally quilt such a large scale meander freehand, though, so keeping the size of that pattern big and somewhat uniform is challenging, and I'm also reminding myself that LARGE quilt blocks with LONG ruler lines to quilt are a lot harder than quilting the exact same designs on smaller blocks.  So my "quick and easy" quilting plan has evolved to require a bit of marking, which is helping to keep lines straighter and more evenly spaced.

Doubting Design Choices After the First Row

One thing that slowed me down was that, since we took the machine head off the frame to install the interchangeable hopping foot upgrade, my horizontal channel lock hadn't been holding as securely as it had previously.  I use my horizontal and vertical channel locks to keep my seams straight and square as I'm quilting, and this was bugging me, so there was an interruption of troubleshooting that yesterday with Bernie and the folks at APQS Tech Support (One little washer was all it took to snug that wheel back up to the carriage and correct the problem).  But, while I had Bernie and Anders available, I had them lower my frame about 3 1/2" so I could quilt from the front of the machine more comfortably.  I'd been wearing high heel platform sandals the day before, since we'd raised my frame a few inches for quilting pantographs from the back side of the machine.  We also moved my laser light from the back of the machine to the front, where it will be more useful to me once my IntelliQuilter gets installed.  But I digress.  Back to the quilt at hand:

40 wt Fantastico in #5007 Wales (Lime, Bright Green, Turquoise, Green Variegated)

I selected a cone of Superior Thread's Fantastico variegated 40 weight trilobal polyester thread in shades of Lime, Bright Green, Turquoise and Green, which I auditioned against the Kona Bone background as well as on the Indigo and the green fabrics.  I wanted to use one thread color throughout to "keep it simple," but knew that a white or off-white background thread might look really harsh against the dark blue.  I was excited about the variegated thread until I started quilting with it, and then I second-guessed myself midway through the first row.  

Superior's Fantastico Thread in #5007 Wales

I was tempted to start ripping out all the quilting I'd done so far, because I felt like the quilting was just screaming at me instead of playing a supportive role to the piecing design...  But the next day, when I came back to it, I reminded myself of my self-imposed deadline and how I wanted most of all to have this finished, so I soldiered on.  And, you know what?  I'm glad I kept going rather than reaching for my seam ripper, because the more I got quilted, the more the thread began to grow on me.

By the End of the Second Row, My Thread Felt Like the Right Choice

This is a good reminder to TAKE A STEP BACK before making rash decisions involving seam rippers!  With my face 8" away from the quilt surface, the green pastel threads seemed like they were too loud and fighting with the quilt, but from a distance it's much more subtle.  If I'd ripped out all the variegated thread and switched to yellow, green, navy and white, not only would I have slowed myself down considerably, but the quilting designs would have disappeared into the fabrics more -- and I might have been disappointed that I couldn't see my quilting designs well enough!  Knowing how the quilt will soften and smoosh and crinkle once it's finished and washed for the first time, I think this thread will be just fine.

So now my only question is whether those giant green 8" HSTs have enough quilting in them.  I mean, I know they have enough quilting to meet the requirements of the batting.  I kind of like the way they look right now, but maybe I'll come back and add something when everything else is finished.

Speaking of finished, I did finish the big sister's quilt, which you can read about here.  Here's a glimpse of how that one turned out, freshly washed and ready for gifting:

October OMG Part One Was Finished On Time!

That's it for me for tonight.  I'm going to eat too many Twix bars with my husband and son while we watch Saturday Night Live.  I just realized that this is probably the last Halloween that I'll have a kid at home with us, since Anders is a high school senior this year.  They don't come home from college for Halloween, so this will be an Empty Nester Holiday for us from now on.  So strange to think about that!  Okay, I lied.  I'm leaving you with one more picture, from my favorite Halloween in 2006 when the boys were 3 and 5 years old:

Halloween 2006: Anders is Batman, Bernie is Aquaman, and Lars is Spiderman

Anders is in the Batman costume on the left, Lars is Spiderman on the right, and my wonderful, amazing husband is wearing what is supposed to be an Aquaman costume.  I did not have an Aquaman pattern, so I made this costume from a Jalie men's figure skating costume pattern, out of green stretch velvet for the figure skating pants (more revealing in real life than they appear on TV during the Olympics) and an orange sequined lycra figure skating top, because the sequins were the closest thing I could come up with at JoAnn fabrics that looked like scales.  Bless his heart; he got more than a few catcalls from the neighbor ladies as he was out trick-or-treating with the kids, but my sons were SO HAPPY to be their own little Justice League with Daddy!

Happy Halloween, everyone!  I'm linking today's post with:

SATURDAY

·       UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

One Monthly Goal at  Elm Street Quilts

SUNDAY

·       Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

·       Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

·       Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

One Monthly Goal: October 2020

 I'm late to the OMG (One Monthly Goal) party this month, slipping in my link right before the OMG goal setting linky closes over at Elm Street Quilts.  I did not meet my September goal, and wasn't sure what my October goal should be.  So hard to pick ONE goal when so many are swirling around my monster to-do list!

October OMG Part I: Modern Baby Clam Shells Quilt

Okay, so my October OMG is going to be a two-fer-one special, because these two quilts are going to the same home.  By the time Halloween rolls around, I need to finish my Modern Baby Clam Shells quilt for an almost-two-year-old who is newly a Big Sister, AND I need to finish my baby sized monogram version of the AQS Letter Home QAL for the baby brother who was born on October 1st.

October OMG Part II: Letter Home Baby w/Pieced Monogram

The current status of the butterflies-and-clam shells quilt is that it's loaded on my long arm frame, 2/3 of the way quilted, and should be ready for labeling and binding by the end of today.

Clam Shell Quilting is Currently In Progress

The baby brother's quilt is still in the piecing stage.  Everything is cut out and I'm close to having all of the blocks pieced.  Hopefully this one will be ready to load on the frame soon after the butterfly quilt comes off.

Letter Home Block Construction is Currently In Progress

I've purchased and prewashed/shrunk the backing and binding fabrics for Letter Home, but still need to seam two backing lengths together and actually make the binding.  Plus I still need to digitize, embroider, and attach a label for each quilt, and I usually hand stitch my binding so that will take some time as well.  

So the plan is to get both of these quilts finished, wrapped, and sent off in the mail by Halloween!  If you don't see me posting as often this month, it will be because I'm busy QUILTING instead of just WRITING about quilting!  ;-)

OMG! I Met My Goals for August, Early! What Should I Do With Myself?

 Oh my gosh, you guys -- this is a rare surprise.  There are still 7 whole days left in the month of August, and I just realized that I have finished all of the quilting goals I'd set for this month.  Finished them EARLY.  I know, right?!  Who IS this imposter, and what has she done with the REAL Rebecca Grace?!

And it's not like I was wimpy with those goals, either.  Let's recap:

August Quilting Goals:

1. ✅ Finish cutting out the next four blocks for MMBB & move them off the cutting table.
2. ✅ Trim excess batting and backing from Spirit Song quilt
3. ✅ Make the binding for Spirit Song
4. ✅ Digitize & machine embroider a label for Spirit Song; appliqué to back of quilt
5. ✅ Machine stitch binding to the front of Spirit Song
6. ✅ Hand stitch binding to the back of Spirit Song.  Launder & photograph.
7. ✅ Decide what's getting quilted next and load it onto the long arm frame
8. ✅ Piece one or more of those MMBB blocks that are printed up, cut out, and ready to sew
9. ✅ Launch & promote Weekly Long Arm Linky party, beginning August 4th

My Spirit Song quilt, renamed Sermon Scribbles, is completely finished.  You can read more about that one here:

I finished all four of the blocks for my version of the Moda Modern Quilt Blocks that were printed up and ready to start at the beginning of the month.  Twelve blocks down, 36 more to go on that one.  To see more about that project, click here:

And my fourth Long Arm Learning link up published automatically an hour ago, just as scheduled.  If you're looking for today's LAL linky party, click here!  I've been learning so much from what other machine quilters are sharing in that space.

I also managed to finish all of the items on last week's To-Do list.

Last Week's To-Do List:

• ✅ Piece backing for tumbler outreach top pictured above (next in line for quilting!)
• ✅ Load tumbler quilt on frame
• ✅ Select pantograph and thread
• ✅ Quilt tumbler quilt

I'm not sure the pantograph I chose (Wild at Heart) was necessarily beginner friendly, but it was one that I owned, the scale was right, and it came out better than expected.  Win!  This quilt will be donated to a pediatric patient in one of our local hospitals, through the Charlotte Quilters Guild.

So, I find myself with a whole freebie week at the end of August, with everything crossed off my quilty To-Do lists early!  What should I do with it?  

I think my goal for this week should involve a project that I've been neglecting, something like this tumbler top that languished for over a year in my Purgatory closet...  This week, my goals are going to be about anti-procrastination.

This Week's Tuesday's To-Do List:

• Start piecing my Modern Baby Clam Shell Quilt (for the baby who was born in 2018, who is about to become a big sister this October!)

That's it, just the one thing.  It's enough.  It's just a 40" x 40" baby quilt, and all of the pieces are cut out, but I stalled out because I was unsure of how I wanted to construct them.  I'm still unsure, except that I know I want to actually piece them rather than doing an appliqué method.  So I need to get these out again and figure out where to start -- do I build out from the center circles, or do I start at the top and work my way down.  And I need to decide whether a 40" x 40" quilt is even big enough to be useful to a 2-year-old or if I should enlarge it somehow...  Ugh.  Dread.  See?  This was supposed to be a "quick and easy" baby gift two years ago.  I want it off my list of works in progress projects left abandoned!  One goal is enough for this week!

I'm linking up today's post with the end-of-August One Monthly Goal link up at Elm Street Quilts, and with To-Do on Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us.  

One (Or Two) Monthly Goals for July: Finish Quilting Spirit Song + Launch New Long Arm Learning Linky Party

Can you believe that the year 2020 is officially half over already?  My brain is still stuck back in February, before the whole world came to a screeching halt and we all woke up at the Mad Hatter's tea party with Alice in Wonderland...  

I know the whole idea of the OMG "One Monthly Goal" linky party is to focus on ONE main goal for the month, but I have two for July.  One of them is a quilting goal, and the other one is a blogging goal.  And the two goals are interrelated, with the blogging goal supporting the quilting goal and the quilting goal supporting the blogging goal, so it's kind of like my One Monthly Goal for July is a pair of conjoined twin goals!

My July Quilting Goal: Finish Custom Quilting Spirit Song

Spirit Song is still my primary focus project, and since I'm getting sick of looking at it, I'd really like to finish ALL of the quilting and get it off my frame by the end of July!  I'll bet y'all are getting tired of looking at this quilt, too, aren't you?!

I've already completed the SID (Stitch in the Ditch) as well as the ruler work and free motion designs in the pink/peach/yellow patches.  I've also finished quilting one of the longer ruler work and string of pearls borders, also quilting the ruler work and free motion designs in the little blue HSTs (half square triangles) as I work my way down the quilt.  So, breaking this big July goal down into component steps, I still need to:

1. Finish quilting borders and blue HSTs with blue thread.
2. Rethread with off white thread, either So Fine #50 weight or Bottom Line top and bottom (haven't decided yet)
3. Finalize which background fill designs I want to quilt in which areas
4. Quilt fairly dense background fills in all of the white/cream/neutral patches

I have two different diamond shaped designs going on in this quilt, and I know that I want to quilt the background fabrics differently in each of them.  I'm thinking of things like pebbles, little curlicues or swirls, matchstick quilting, small-scale stippling, etc., for the most part nothing that needs marking, except that something cute is going to have to go in the center diamond in the photo below:

Hopefully whatever I decide to quilt will go faster than all of the marked designs I've been quilting for the past couple of months, and hopefully I won't get bored from the repetition and burn out on it before I finish.

My July Blogging Goal: Launch New Long Arm Learning Linky Party

...Did YOU vote in my poll yet?  I've decided to launch a new weekly linky party with the theme Long Arm Learning!  Having made the substantial financial investment in my long arm machine just over three years ago, I have quilted exactly 3 charity quilts and 4 "real" quilts.  All of the charity quilts and one of the "real" quilts were quilted with edge to edge pantograph designs, one "real" quilt was quilted with an allover freehand loopy meander design, one was quilted completely with rulers, and one was a light custom quilt job with a mix of SID, simple ruler work and a smorgasbord of freehand fills.  But clearly, I am not going to master long arm quilting if I only quilt one or two quilts each year, right?  In my defense, I did have some mechanical issues with my machine when I first got it that really aggravated my learning curve.  As a complete newbie to long arm quilting, I struggled for a year and a half on practice samples, thinking my problems were user error, until a professional longarm quilter friend in my guild who has the same machine as me came to my house to help me and told me that my machine "wasn't supposed to do that!"  The wonderful folks at APQS helped my husband and me to go over my Millennium from top to bottom, checking absolutely EVERYTHING the same way they would do if I sent it back to the factory for "spa maintenance," and now every part that showed the slightest wear or malfunction has been replaced, every adjustment has been fine-tuned, and Thoroughly Modern Millie is purring along like a kitten.  It's time to ramp up my learning curve!

As a new long arm quilter, it is so easy to get bogged down in endless practice samples, trying to get "good enough" before you risk "ruining" a real quilt by quilting it poorly.  I love this idea that maybe no one is EVER "ready" to do anything -- and the only way to GET ready, or to get good enough to feel ready, is to just jump in and start trying!

I am really looking forward to connecting with other machine quilters in general (YES, domestic machine quilters are welcome) as well as others who are learning long arm quilting through this linky party.  The Internet is wonderful for being able to shrink the globe and create virtual communities of like-minded quilters, and I hope that hosting the linky party will also help me to be more intentional -- and more CONSISTENT -- with my long arm quilting.  I look forward to learning from others!

But first, I have some work to do.  These are the steps I still need to accomplish before I can cross "launch new linky party" off my July OMG list:

1. I figured out how to create a graphic for my linky party "button," but I still need to figure out the html code part of it so that the image functions as a button rather than just an image
2. Select a linking platform and create my account
3. Figure out the mechanics of actually creating a linky party and inserting the link up into my blog post so that others can join in the fun
4. I know I want a weekly link party, but I haven't picked the day of the week yet -- so let me know in the comments if you have a preference!
5. Finally, and crucially, I'll need to figure out how to spread the word about my new linky party so that those who might want to participate can find out about it.  Again, if anyone has suggestions, please share them in the comments

Of course, I am still going to participate in all of the other linky parties I've been joining up with for the last few years.  If I didn't get so much out of other people's linky parties, I would not even be considering starting one of my own.

So, I'm linking up today's post with One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts.   Fingers crossed that this time, when the end of the month rolls around, I will be able to link up a post about how I accomplished both of my July goals as well!  Have a wonderful Independence Day holiday, those of you in the United States!

OMG, It's February! Tabby Mountains is My One Monthly Goal

I have resisted joining this One Monthly Goal (OMG) thing for a LONG time, but I'm gonna give it a go this month.  OMG is a monthly linky party hosted by Patty over at Elm Street Quilts.  The idea is to set one REASONABLE goal that you share at the beginning of the month and then do a follow up post at the end of the month.  It's about Motivation and Accountability and Blah Blah Whatever.  There are even sponsors and prizes, if you're into that kind of thing.  Intrigued?  You can see others' goals for February and find out about this month's prizes over at Elm Street Quilts here.  

Anyway, I generally have multiple lists of goals and priorities for each project, each list having so many sublists, subgoals, footnotes and side trips that I can barely keep track of the lists, let alone accomplish any of the things ON the lists.  And that's just for my sewing and quilting projects -- there are other lists and sublists for my interior design business, for all of the music I'm responsible for learning for various choirs, for household tasks and for all of the responsibilities that come with being the administrative assistant mom of two teenage boys...  It can take me an hour and a half just to go through all of my lists and decide what to tackle first!  So for February, just for a lark, I'm going to try this OMG thing and see whether picking just ONE sewing goal for the month helps me to spend more of my sewing time SEWING instead of planning what to sew next.

I was musing aloud about this One Monthly Goal thing yesterday, wondering what my goal should be for February, and my darling husband piped up with a suggestion.  He thinks my goal should be "that your husband doesn't catch you buying more fabric."  Notice he didn't say my goal should be NOT BUYING fabric; just that he shouldn't "CATCH" me buying fabric.  Isn't that cute?  He wants to play that game where I buy fabric and smuggle it into the house at the bottom of grocery bags and carry it upstairs, buried within stacks of laundry...  Okay, Sweetie.  Game on!  But that's not a quilting goal, that's one falls under Things We Do To Keep Our Marriage Exciting.

And so: ONE goal for February, challenging enough to feel good about attaining, yet reasonable enough that I'm not setting myself up for defeat as soon as Life happens (as Life has a habit of doing).  I want my OMG to support my overall goal for the year of becoming proficient with my longarm quilting machine.  My One Monthly Goal for February has got to be piecing AND longarm quilting my Tabby Mountain quilt.  

My February OMG: Piece AND Quilt Tabby Mountain

The triangles are all cut out and laid out on the design wall, and I actually started piecing the first couple of rows over the weekend.  As anticipated, since these are NOT equilateral triangles, the piecing did not go smoothly.  The seam ripper was called into play repeatedly.

Sew, Rip, Sew, Rip; Repeat ad infinitum

This Is the WRONG Way to Line Up the Triangles!!

Look at the above photo, where I've drawn the seam line on the pink triangle 1/4" in from the raw edge.  That was my first idea about how to sew these triangles together, and that idea was WRONG!  In order to line these up correctly, the beginning of the chalk line at the bottom of the pink triangle needs to be touching the raw edge of the Cat Treats triangle beneath it.  When these two triangles are properly matched up for sewing, the lower right corner of that pink triangle will be sticking past the raw edge of the Cat Treats triangle.

I probably sewed, ripped, and resewed that one seam three or four times and it still wasn't right.  At this point, after so much handling, my raw edges were beginning to fray and the bias edges of my triangles were showing signs of distortion.  Clearly this idea of "jogging the edges slightly" as recommended by my pattern instructions wasn't going to cut it!  So I thought about traditional hand piecing, where you actually mark and align stitching lines on each piece, or at least mark dots at the beginning and end of each seam intersection.  So, using gridded template plastic and an X-Acto cutter along with the 30 degree triangle ruler I used to cut my fabric, I cut out a template the same size as my triangle units, including the seam allowances.  Then, laying my see-through template on top of my triangle ruler, I marked a small dot with an extra-fine point Sharpie marker where the quarter inch seam lines should intersect at each corner.  I punched a tiny hole exactly through each black dot with a 1/16" hole puncher, and now I can use this template to mark those crucial intersections with a Sewline mechanical chalk pencil on each triangle as I line them up for piecing. If I poke a pin straight through the dot on one triangle and straight through the dot on the other triangle, that should guarantee that my alignment is correct the FIRST time I sew that seam, right?

Marking Seam Intersections With My Piecing Template

Miraculously, even before I had the idea of making a template, some of my seams DID come out okay.  If they're not perfect, then at least they're close enough for me to fudge when I join the rows together.  I'm done ripping because my goal is to get this project QUILTED this month -- eye on the prize, right?

The Ones I Can Live With

I am disregarding the pattern instructions to press seams open because I tried doing that on the first couple of seams and nearly melted my fingerprints off with my iron.  So now I'm pressing the seams to the sides, alternating from left to right with each row.  Much easier to get a nice, crisply pressed open seam that way, at least in my experience.

Tentative Quilting Plan for Tabby Mountain

Meanwhile, I was well enough to sing at two church services on Sunday morning, and I came up with this preliminary quilting plan on my iPad during the sermons.  I'm fidgety, so I find that I actually pay better attention to what the pastor is saying when I'm doodling, so don't judge me...  It's not just the four year olds who benefit from coloring pages during worship!  So.  The above plan includes some ruler work and little circles on the solid colored diamonds (two adjacent rows of solid triangles) and some easy free motion fills on the print fabrics.  At least, these were free motion fills that I was able to execute fairly well on my practice pieces, so I'm looking forward to trying them out on a real quilt next.

And now that my "Math Is Beautiful" quilt is finished and delivered and I'm not as intimidated by my longarm machine, the thought of QUILTING this Tabby Mountain quilt is my motivation to persist through the piecing.  Yay!  

As I mentioned initially, I'm linking up with One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts today, as well as:

·       Let’s Bee Social at www.sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/

·       Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·       WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

·       WIPs With Friends at www.mamaspark.blogspot.com 

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

·       Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/