Two totally finished quilts - Mirror Mirror & Crossroads, Rose House top from Janice, OBW center panel laid out

A girl born today will have fewer reproductive and voting rights than her grandmother. Read that sentence again...

8647

************************************

MAY, 1^st, 2026 – today is my BLOG-O-VERSARY…..I have been writing this blog for 15 years.  I started in May of 2011 and it grew out of the letters I used to write to my family and especially my parents and eventually Michael’s mom and my Aunt Violet.  I am pretty sure it was my friend Nancy who introduced me to creating a blog; she had started one and posted every month or so….well, I took to it like the proverbial duck to water and started posting every day.  Now I’m posting 2 – 3 times a week….but I’m ok with that.  It is great to be able to post pictures of what I am talking about, and I enjoy reading the 10 years ago entries….as I have forgotten many, many things.  The blog has definitely evolved over the years into the current format.  Although sometimes it is a pain….one of the things that keeps me going is the comments/emails I get about something I have written….so I want to thank all of you for those interactions!!

Friday morning (5/1), I was up early to finally face my long arm once again.  Cindy suggested that I try another bobbin case, since I told her I had tested all of the thread guides on my machine and could not find a nick/burr or a rough spot that would be causing my thread to break.  I had high hopes as I started out, which were quickly dashed after 4 breaks across the first row :~(. 

I dropped back to binding on my new king sized quilt…this time on the front side...

and slow and steady really is good, as even though I sewed 90% of one of the long sides WITHOUT ANY BOBBIN THREAD……by 6:30 PM I had a totally finished quilt: 

Michael and I settled in with popcorn to watch WAKE UP DEAD MAN….one of the totally convoluted KNIVES OUT mysteries.....lots of fun!

And here’s a new quilt top from Janice…the perfect size for Rose House, a local women’s shelter:

She's trying to finish up all of her quilts that are specific to North Carolina before the move....Rose House is a specific and odd size that probably wouldn't be asked for anywhere else.

************************************************************

My honey asked if we could have pancakes Saturday morning (5/2) so that’s what breakfast was: 

along with my honey's smurfy fried potatoes.

I read my book until NOON before finally heading to the studio again.  I fired up XENA and finally got my Crossroads quilt finished off.  It took me over an hour to get all of the bobbin ends woven in, but I got that done and got the quilt trimmed and started to bind it: 

It was a chilly day here….so we both had soup for dinner (potato for me and sausage soup for Michael) before playing cribbage (I put up a valiant fight, but as usual, Michael won :~) and settling in to watch TV.

**********************************************************

I loaded up a customer quilt on Sunday morning (5/3): 

praying all the while that things might go better. I think the problem is my thread.  Compared to a commercial long armmer, I don’t do that many quilts per year….the woman who used to do my quilts before I got my own long arm did over 600 per year (remember, I only did 86 last year)….so I don’t use my thread very quickly.  That means most of it is several years old.  I don’t yet know what I’m going to do about the problem….I’m sure I have a couple of thousand dollars worth of thread….so I am not going to throw it out….I have to talk to INNOVA next week to see what, if anything, I can do.

My honey was out running errands....and one of them was picking strawberries at IVY Place:

-he went all down this row...which looks like it goes to infinity

They are SO HUGE and SO sweet! They taste like they have been sprinkled with sugar. I'd like to gorge myself on them :~).

I continued to work on my customer quilt in the afternoon and got about 3/4 of the way done (with NO BREAKS!!!) before I stopped for dinner.  I was also working on the binding on the right side of my CROSSROADS quilt:

and by dinnertime I had another TOTALLY FINISHED QUILT:

I had 192 or 196 snowball corners on this quilt, and I gave all of my ''trimmings/triangles'' from those to June...and she has made a quilt out of them. We are both going to bring our quilts in for show and tell at Thursday quilting.

And I don't even remember what day this happened, but I finally finished fussy cutting all of my flowers for the One Block Wonder quilt and Michael got them put up for my center rectangle:

Now I just have to figure out how to affix them without disturbing the pattern, and applique them on.

And 10 years ago....

-Food and Fiber Floozie: yoghurt

-Food and Fiber Floozie: oxalis before & after, pancakes & bacon, Jan

-Food and Fiber Floozie: Sandy's quilt finished, beginning of my bed quilt, ham & cheese rolls

-Food and Fiber Floozie: Machine Embroidery Window, new customer quilt

*** Gordon Ramsey says ''where there's fat, there's flavor''...I now identify as delicious. ***

*** I think I turned out OK for a kid that was raised at least partially by Bugs Bunny. ***

*** Why the heck do underwear and socks come in resealable bags....but potato chips don't? ***