Hello From Somewhere

 Hello Friends!

Yes, it's been a long long time.  Life just happens, you know? 

2023 brought a lot of challenges and surprises, both personally and professionally.  I'm sure the same can be said for all of us.

Needless to say, my personal blog fell by the wayside.  

I keep telling myself that all I have to do is make it a priority.  Make it a new habit.  Pick a day of the week/month and stick to it.  But I just can't seem to be stick with my blog.

I LOVE to write.  I mean, I really really love to write.  So, what's the problem?  I write a lot.  I have a couple new books in the works.  I write a blog for work.  I write patterns.  I write, write, write.  Hmm. Maybe I just write too much? 

Anyway, I'm going to try again to work on my blog regularly.  I think it would be nice to talk about my personal quilting journey once again.  

So, I'm saying it one more time, I am going to try. 

You know the story -- I think I can, I think I can........

Stay tuned!

            Best, 

                    Tricia

Early Honeybee Quilt Blocks — MUST SEE

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I have spent most of the summer exploring my vast antique and vintage textile collection, which includes yardage, scraps, quilt blocks, quilt tops, and quilts.  When I started this project, I really had no idea the sheer magnitude of the undertaking — I am amazed and delighted with the stuff I have collected and hoarded over the years. Recently I shifted my focus from yardage and scraps to quilt tops and quilt blocks.  While shifting through a large crate of quilt blocks, I rediscovered this set of three antique Honeybee blocks and I knew I had to share them because they are sweet and naive and utterly delicious!

These blocks are pretty early, but because the fabrics are solid turkey red and chrome yellow, it’s hard to pinpoint an exact date, but I estimate them to be around 1840-1870 due to the turkey red/chrome yellow combination.  I think the chrome yellow looks like it might have been a home dyed yellow, but I don't know for sure.

I am including photos of all three blocks as well as the back of one of the block so you can see the handwork, too.  Now I’m going to let the blocks tell you their story.

 

 So, what do you think of these blocks?  Aren’t they wonderful? 

I really wish there were four blocks, because with only three, there isn’t much that I can do with them.  I am considering framing them and displaying them together side by side. I think that would be very eye catching.

If you had these three blocks, what would you do? I appreciate the ideas. Thanks!

My Villa Rosa Rose Cards Are Popping Up in the Most Unexpected Places!

Well, hello again!  No, I haven't forgotten about you.  Honest.  Things have just been super busy around here.  I'm sure you can relate.  :)

I missed 2 weeks in a row this time, but I do actually have a very legitimate reason -- my family had a giant garage sale (no we weren't selling the actual garage, you silly goose!) over Memorial week end.  Whew!  I am so glad that it is over.  I had forgotten how much work went into preparing for a garage sale.  I think we spent 2 weeks (or was it 5 years???) getting everything cleaned, priced, arranged, etc.  It wasn't one of our best sales, but I guess it wasn't our worst either, either.

Anyway, while I was getting ready for the garage sale, my friend Cathey Laird skipped off to Spring Market in Kansas City, MO.  Lucky girl!  She sent me the following advertisement image in a message:

This is an ad for the Top 25 Patterns at Moda.  Check out the third pattern down on the left side -- YES!  It is my Salt Water Taffy Rose Card pattern for Villa Rosa!  YIPPEE!  Wow, was I surprised when she messaged it to me -- she really made my day.

Out of curiosity, I went to Moda's website and looked under their books and patterns section.  Again, I was surprised to find most, if not all, of our Villa Rosa Rose Cards, including ALL of my designs.  This is so mind-boggling and exciting.  (You can't see me right now, but I am doing my happy dance as I write this post.)

I never know where my designs and patterns are going to show up next.

Something I Always Wanted...

This past week end, I was very excited to go to one of my favorite fun places -- Lisa's General Store (previously Lisa's Indoor Flea Market) located in Greenville, PA.  Over the years, I have found lots of different treasures, particularly quilt-related treasures -- antique and vintage quilt blocks, fabric, a blue and white double Irish Chain quilt from circa 1920 for an unbelievable price (I won't tell you because you would be so jealous!), vintage sewing boxes, etc.  Of course, there's always non-quilting stuff like books, clothing, food, and just about everything you could imagine and some things  you probably couldn't imagine.

Anyway, on Sunday, I finally found something that I have wanted for a long time and was able to bring it home!  YAY!

  

A vintage Martha Washington Sewing Cabinet!

It's not perfect and needs some TLC, but it is charming and very functional.  The two front drawers give lots of space for notions and thread -- there are even floating trays in the drawers for small stuff.  On each side on the top there is a hinged lid! When lifted up they reveal a good-sized cubby for stashing projects, materials, or snacks -- maybe chocolate.....

Of course, I did some looking online to see if I could find anything out about this particular type of stand, and was happy to find lots of photos and information.  

1). Apparently, Martha Washington did have a work table, but it looked nothing like this.  Using Martha Washington's name was an advertising ploy.

2). This type of sewing table was based on Federal style tables and became popular during the Depression years as an inexpensive piece of factory-made furniture.  You could buy one in the Sears and Roebuck catalog!

That being said, I discovered that my stand is somewhat unusual, which makes me think it was of a higher quality.  It only has 2 drawers where most of the ones I saw had 3 drawers.  It has really nice detailed metal drawer pulls instead of knobs.  AND it is on a pedestal instead of wooden legs -- and the feet of the pedestal have metal tips with disks underneath to protect the floor.

Of course, my table wouldn't be worth much to anyone but me because it has a broken foot that was 

glued.

Here are some other quilty things I found at Lisa's.  Please enjoy...... 

A Panel Problem

Now that the first stage of the new book is wrapped up, I've turned my thoughts and quilting in a new direction -- working on a sample for our 2016 Saturday quilt group.  Each year we tackle a different project, often some type of sampler.  Mary Lee, my co-leader, came up with a brilliant idea to combine the block book from 2015 (this year) with a quilt pattern called Starlight.

So I started working on my center panel.  Starlight is a great pattern because you can use pretty much any vertical panel -- you just need to add borders around until you get to the right dimensions which are listed in the pattern.  First, I trimmed up my panel to get ready for the first border which I decided to do little pieced squares using all of the fabrics from what I am using for my blocks.  Yes, I had to actually do the math, but I did survive.  I got the border mostly on when I discovered THE PROBLEM.

The panel was not printed straight so now my quilt center is slightly skewed.  UGH!  I've already invested enough time and energy in this project that I don't want to change midstream.  I thought that by carefully adding the remaining borders that I could correct the skew.  Although it was definitely better by the time I finished the borders around the panel, it still isn't perfect.

See what happens when I match up the top and bottom edges of the quilt?  See the big wrinkle?

Now see what happens when I straighten the quilt through the center......the edges don't meet.

With my breath held and fingers crossed, I am going to go ahead with the project as is.  Hopefully by the time I get to the outer edge, things will have straightened out.  I am counting on the forgivability that 100% cotton fabric possesses. Then with a little luck, I will be able to quilt out any remaining distortion.

Maybe the quilt will turn out just fine.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

New Book, New Blog

Greetings to You and Welcome to my new blog, Quilt With a View.

This is a sunset taken from the little valley where I live.

Sadly, I lost interest with my old blog, The Orphan Quilter, last year due to a lot of different circumstances.  So instead of rehabbing it, I decided to turn over a new leaf -- er, new blog.

I have some new goals in mind for this blog, so I thought I'd put them in writing because I have found that if I write something down, it is more meaningful to me.  Does this work for you, too?

My goals:

1.   To be more proactive with my blog in order reach more people.

2.  To incorporate tutorials (since I have a variety of interests, the tutorials may not always be quilting-related).

3.   To invite guest bloggers to my space.

4.   To blog more frequently.

5.   To have fun!

Okay, now that I've got those goals actually written down, let's get started.

I decided that today was the day to start my new blog because today was the day that the rough draft of my third quilt book was due.  Of course, I, being an overachiever, actually submitted everything yesterday.  :0)

This past year was definitely full of ups and downs for me.  In 2014, I submitted a book proposal to my then-publisher, Kansas City Star, and it was accepted.  Of course, I started contacting fabric and supply companies to gather up everything I needed for the book and I jumped right into making projects.  What fun!  

Then earlier this year, I received a devastating email stating that Kansas City Star was closing and as such, they would not be publishing my book, which was slated for a Fall 2016 release.  After I ranted and raved about the unfairness of the world for a couple days, I got my head on straight and started contacting other publishers to see if anyone was interested in my now slightly-tarnished book proposal and a slightly-bruised me.  A couple publishers were interested and we began talking.

After many months, I found out that Kansas City Star and C & T Publishing made a deal so that KCS would become a C & T imprint.  This was definitely good news for me as I was already in talks with C & T.  For a long time, I heard very little about the whole process and I kept my fingers crossed, hoping that no news was indeed good news.  After tweaking my book proposal a bit to make it all shiny and new, I resubmitted it to C & T and they accepted it.  WOO HOO!

So, to make a very long story short, today was the date for submitting my rough draft (which I already did yesterday, remember?).  The quilts themselves are almost finished, which is a good thing because they will be due in about 6 weeks.  By the beginning of December, everything on my end should be wrapped up and then I get to sit back, pat myself on the back, and wait.....and wait.....and wait for that first copy to arrive.  Although there was a lot of water under the bridge, my book is still slated for a Fall 2016 release.

So, anyway....

Today, a mysterious box was left outside the garage door.  At first, we all assumed that it was a returned quilt from one of the magazines that I work with, but the box was light and rattled.  Then I saw that the return address was C & T.  Hmmm.  My curiosity was really peaked at this point and I just had to open that box.

Here's what I found inside:

A tote bag filled with awesome goodies.  It was a welcome gift from C & T!  How cool is that???!!!  Did you know that C & T did more than just publish books?  They also have their own line of fusibles/interfacings, gifty items, tools and rulers, and much much more.  They sent me a lovely assortment of thier items.  

It will be fun to try them out and tell you about them as I do, don't you think?