You've Gotta' Have Heart

So I did finish another quilt this Summer. I've talked about my Cast B Family before. We traveled around the world together for a year when we were just a bunch of kids. Now, over 21 years later, they are still some of my best friends and truly my Family. Some of them live right down the street, while most of them live on the other side of the globe but we still keep in touch with each other on an almost daily basis and we get together as a group at least every third year, if not more often. 

Well, back in May we got quite a scare when one of our own had a heart attack on Mothers Day. Thankfully, her family found her in time and was able to save her life. But it was touch and go there for a while and we were rocked to our core. She lives all the way across the country, so I did the only thing I could think of to help. I made her a quilt. 

In secret, I reached out to our entire Cast and implored them all to send a piece of fabric with a message of hope and support for our Castmate. What filled my mailbox brought me to tears. Blocks of all different shapes and sizes with messages and pictures overflowing with love from four different continents decorated my design wall. If people felt like they couldn't get me their messages by the deadline I told them to tell me what they wanted to say and I printed their messages for them. 

Once all of the messages were in, I worked on the layout, housing all of the well wishes inside a heart. The layout was tricky because I was working with all different kinds of fabrics and all different sizes of blocks, but it was a fun puzzle to piece. And now that I think about it, it was actually good practice for my QuiltCon submission. So, in a way, I owe that to her! Since I had two infants and limited space and time, and I wanted this quilt to be big enough for her and her family to snuggle up under together, I decided to Long Arm it and booked a visit with Harley at Sew Modern. Generously, my husband watched the kids one Saturday afternoon so I could sneak away and quilt. 

It quilted up rather quickly. I think it only took two hours. I did a loose stipple and hid some hearts in the quilting as well as a secret message to her and her brave family. Then I bound it and sent it on it's way home with all the love and warmth of our Cast wrapped up with it. She is the heart of our Cast and part of my Family and I love her and am thankful for every breath she breathes. 

Peek-A-Boo!

These little monsters are starting to let me up for air. I can hardly believe that they're almost a year old. Only three and a half weeks until their First Birthday. I haven't really written or read anything blog related in that time. They've been keeping my busy. But I have been starting to get into the sewing groove again. 



I was able to sneak away for a portion of the LAMQG annual retreat. It felt so good to hang out with my friends and have some unadulterated sewing time. I focused the entire retreat on a massive Flying Geese project that I recently started. My goal was to get it finished in time to submit it to QuiltCon, but I really want to make this one huge and by the end of retreat I still had about 900 geese to complete so I switched gears and finished an improv quilt that had been lingering in my head and got it turned in before the deadline. 

I've also been focused on getting caught up on old projects, primarily finishing up some charity quilts for the Hope Circle of do. Good Stitches. I had these quilts hostage in a variety of stages ranging to simple clean up needed, like hiding tails, to quilted but unbound, to just a pile of blocks. But I've made a push recently to get them finished so I can ship them all together to Threading Hope in the New Year and make room for new projects. 

My New Years Resolution will definitely be to sew more, and to blog more. But my little monsters come first. And I don't mind that at all.