In the last 6 weeks or so I have been out of town 4 times - Beach Week for our family the 2nd week in June, a 5-day cruise with DH's brother's family the last week in June, a great-nephew's christening July 11-12, and now I am in GA to help middle daughter with her new baby daughter. I am feeling like I will never get caught up on email, blogs, Yahoo groups, etc. However, I have a quilting friend who is way busier than I am and she posts blog entries much more frequently (EH, you know who you are), so I am finally posting a contribution to Blogland.
In the last few weeks I have had two encounters with Quilters - Capital "Q" because both of them have published patterns that I have used or had some relationship to. First of all, a few weeks back I had a whole Friday all to myself - doesn't seem like such a big deal for a retiree, but trust me, it is! I wanted to get some serious work done on new granddaughter's quilt. Her parents picked out Squarin' Around after looking at hundreds of patterns that I showed them in books, magazines, and my stash of singles. We finally settled on some of the fabrics from the "Backporch Bouquet" collection from Maywood Studios, with other fabrics added in. I made a few blocks, which don't look anything like I thought they would when I looked at the pattern, and took them to the beach with us so they could see what I had done so far. We tweaked the fabric selection a bit so I was ready to roll the Friday after the beach trip. I cut out enough pieces to get started on and began sewing them together, did the trimming of the blocks, etc -- and had real trouble getting them to come out right. Such trouble that I felt like I could only use about 10 of the first 20 blocks I made. By the afternoon I was wondering what my problem was, and what I could do differently and was getting pretty frustrated and worried. In desparation I googled the designer of the pattern - Karla Alexander - to see if I could find a link or email address for her. I did find her listed on a webpage with a place to send her an email message. So I did that, describing my problem. As I was thinking about which of my MANY UFO's I wanted to work on while I waited to hear from her in the next few days my phone rings - and it is Karla!! This was not more than 5 minutes after I pressed "Send!!" She said she had just turned on her computer and saw my message so thought she would just give me a call. She gave me some good advice about the situation and encouraged me to continue. I am still amazed that she responded so quickly. Too bad she lives in Oregon and I live in VA - I am the Program Co-chair for my guild and I'd suggest her in a heartbeat for a program but I don't think our program budget could swing airfare for a trip from Oregon!
A couple of weeks ago I had a message from Christine Thresh, who designed the Going Around in Circles Again quilt that our daughter Allie made for the niece of her employers. She was very complimentary of Allie's work on the quilt and we emailed back and forth a couple of times. I was happy to hear the compliments, and gladly forwarded her messages to Allie. Pretty cool!
