Lessons Learned

Quilting is a fun adventure. This year my goal was to enter a quilt in the International Quilt Festival in Houston. As Maxwell Smart would say "I was this close". The entry form was due on Thursday, June 12 and on Wednesday I made one too many errors that could not be corrected by Thursday. I was a bit disappointed, but in the end the quilt turned out wonderfully and I am very happy with it. Since it was a wholecloth quilt with my original design, I discovered that blue chalk really isn't the way to mark a quilt. Luckily, I only made the mistake on the center medallion. I still haven't figured out how to get the lines out. Also, the quilt is huge and it took 54 bobbins. I thought I had enough thread, but at the end of the day, I became cognizant of the additional coding on thread with the dye lot number. I probably used three or four different dye lot numbers on this quilt. In addition, I did not take into consideration the amount of matching fabric needed for the binding. When I went back to the store to purchase another couple of yards, guess what??? That's right, there were five different off white fabrics, but none were either my brand of fabric or the right color. Note to self to remember to buy LOTS of fabric when doing a wholecloth quilt. All in all I am not disappointed. I will be finishing the binding and then I will be giving this as a present to my brother in November. It's a milestone birthday so he's getting the "special" gift!!! I think he and his wife will enjoy it. I am now working on another wholecloth quilt (original design) that I started last weekend. It's a lot smaller and I should be able to finish it up this weekend. Yay!

Since last we spoke I have changed jobs. I spent almost five years at the last company and in June, I made the switch to a job that comes really, really close to being "perfect". It's amazing how nice it is to go to work each day and enjoy the view, do my job, get every other Friday off and get paid a lot to do less work than before. Hmm . . . go figure . . . life is good right now.

Tonight the sky is pink. I took some pictures to capture the moment. It was threatening to rain, but it was only a threat. I guess we got plenty dumped on us this week with Tropical Storm Eduordo.

Well, I must go create. Enjoy your evening.