Blueberry Buckle

Progress

We were away for Memorial Day weekend, first spending a day in western Maryland where we are getting our old house ready to sell, then traveling with the teens to the Delaware shore for a couple of days' visit to my son Wills. We had a great time playing mini golf, walking to the beach, watching Wills run a 5K, and eating fish and chips here. Really, if you ever get to the Delaware beaches, you've got to eat at Go FIsh. (And if you don't like fish, try the shepherd's pie. My stepson Josh said the it's the best he's tasted. He knows his shepherd's pie.)

I don't want to lose my quilting momentum, so as soon as I shipped out all the weekend fabric orders from the shop and the other shop, I got right back to the postage stamp quilt.

Thank you for the encouragement for this particular quilt design. It's very popular! Tiffany brought up a good point in her comment about strip piecing. While I'm not able to strip piece due to, well, lack of strips, I have been able to chain piece just as she suggested. I stitched each print square to a white square. I decided to work the quilt in four sections, so I started with one-fourth of the print squares. I chain pieced them by running them through the sewing machine one after another

and then I clipped them apart. Chain piecing saves a lot of time and thread!

I pressed the seam of each pair toward the print fabric and laid them out on the dining table to ensure even distribution of each of the prints. I call this technique "planned random".

I then stacked up each "column" of pairs, placed the stacks, in order, onto the lid of a plastic container, and took it over to the sewing table. In the morning, I'll chain piece the rows together. I love progress.

Speaking of progress, we stopped by the new house this morning and it has siding! They also poured concrete for the front stoop and walkway. We're really getting excited about our home!

Progress is good.

Home

Sitting down to write a blog post about a sewing project, because I thought it would be nice to have some sewing-related content for a change, I logged in to typepad and saw that I hadn't blogged since last week. Oops.

After my last post, I successfully retrieved my youngest son, Drew, from the airport. He returned last Friday morning, in the wee hours, from a trip to Asia with his grandmother. It was a pretty good deal: three weeks excused from school (he does have to pass his exams and write a paper), a few days in China, a stop in Russia, a cruise ship to Japan, and then visits to several cities in Japan and an extended stay there.

His plane landed in Baltimore just a couple of hours before the earthquake.

Our television has been mostly tuned to CNN since we woke up after a short sleep on Friday morning. My husband's family members in the Tokyo area are all accounted for and well. Inconvenienced to be sure, but unharmed.

We're praying for everyone in Japan: the family members of those who have perished; the survivors who are suffering hardships of makeshift shelters, food shortages and cold; the rescue personnel, emergency relief organizations and government officials who have a huge task ahead; and the power plant engineers and workers who need time and resources to prevent further tragedy. Our hearts go out to those whose lives are changed forever, and especially to those who have lost their families and communities.

Fixed

My Etsy shops are back up and operational. Woohoo! This weekend I'll go through them to figure out what's what with expired listings, etc. I'm continuing to move forward with the new .com shop, though, (listing a lot of new fabric) because my eggs will no longer be in one basket. Way too risky.

I am not able to comment on my communication with Etsy. While they are very business-like and procedural and did eventually fix my shops, I just wish it felt like they cared a little more about their clients. They need someone there, maybe a Director of Warm Fuzzies, someone who is expert at calming panicked sellers who feel as though the sky has fallen. That would have helped.

When the dust has settled, I will be so happy to have time to get back to quilting!

In the meantime, this boy is on his way home from touring Asia:

 
Apparently he gave guided tours in China. Love that!

One of my older sons is coming over for supper before we head to the airport to greet Drew's plane at midnight. I hope I can stay awake that late!

Thank you!

Wow! Thank you so much for the wonderful comments about my shop! It is so good to hear from you and to know that my little shop is important to you. Thank you also for the wonderful suggestions you submitted via email. I've got some great new ideas now to implement for you. =)

We've been very busy here the past few days, primarily getting my son Drew off to Asia where he's going on a cruise/tour with his grandmother for almost three weeks. They are currently on a 14-hour flight from Chicago to Seoul, South Korea.

Drew had some social obligations to fill over the weekend (I drove) and then we had to go shopping for things he needed for the trip. Yesterday was a holiday here, so Drew was off school, which made it a great opportunity for us to spend some time together before his departure.

Then we had a little adventure.

He needed to be at the airport near Baltimore at 7:00 this morning. Well, I checked the weather yesterday morning and learned that we had 1-2" of snow predicted. Not a problem. We'd just leave for the airport a little early, like at 5:30 am.

By yesterday afternoon, though, the sky looked pretty ominous and the weather forecast was not so travel friendly. 2-4" of snow, ending right about the time we'd have to start driving.

For those of you who live in areas that receive a lot of snow, 2-4" is nothing, right? I grew up in New England and I remember waiting for the school bus in worse storms than that. (We just had to be sure to jump up onto the snowbank when the bus came down the hill because we knew it would slide right through the icy intersection. Back in those days we were smart enough not to get hit. Anyhoo.)

But this is Delaware we're talking about, and Maryland, and you have to know that more than 2" of snow is downright crippling. I mean, the news says 2-4" overnight and the kids *know* they won't have school the next day. And the stores immediately run out of essentials like milk, eggs, and bread (apparently everyone eats French Toast on snow days) and toilet paper. Hmmm.

Drew's grandmother called and invited him to stay over at a hotel near the airport. By that time, it was sleeting out, and dark, so we decided to wait it out until morning.

Then we heard this:

 
The black line indicates our travel route from Delaware to the airport.

Not looking good.

So we decided to drive before it got really bad, loaded up the car, and began our adventure.

The one-hour trip to the airport took three hours. For much of the drive, visibility was seriously inhibited by snow, it was impossible to see the lines on the highway (but we could tell we were on the road because of the guard rails, haha), and while we started our trip at 40 mph (vs. the customary 65 mph), we crawled the last few miles at about 10 mph. The really scary part was the 30 minutes we didn't see another car on the snow-covered highway and I wondered if somehow I was some insane person to be driving in a crazy blizzard.

But we made it safely to the hotel where we got to sleep for a few blissful hours.

 
Drew was too busy sending text messages to his friends at 6:00 am on a snow day (evil boy he is) to pose for a picture.

 
And before I knew it, he was on his way.

I sure hope he brings back some nice fabric from Japan. Oh, and that he has a good, safe trip. ;)

The Move is Upon Us!

We learned on October 7th that we'll be moving on October 15th. Yep, that's just about a one-week notice. So we've been very, very busy packing, doing paperwork, buying a few odds and ends, etc. Not to mention having sales in the shops. Shops, as in more than one? I need to tell you about that!

Our moving situation is a little unconventional, and it may well raise questions, so it's probably best to tell it all here. We don't want to leave you all wondering, hehe.

Sometimes we have to do hard things for the people we love, and to do what's best for our families. Eric and I have rented an apartment in Delaware where I'll be staying with my son Drew, who is in high school there. Drew will be able to see me and his dad regularly, and stay at his same school.

On weekends, we'll be going home to Maryland to spend time with Eric and Josh. Or Eric and Josh will join us and stay in our little apartment. When we're home in Maryland, we'll be working on some small projects to get our house ready to sell.

Eric's job is moving him to Delaware in the spring, and as soon as that happens, we'll buy a house there and we'll all be together again under one roof. Whew!

Like I said, a bit unconventional, but it's all good.

So, the shops. I'm so excited about the shops! A few weeks ago I opened a new Etsy shop called Simply Solid Fabric, where I'm selling Kona Cotton Solid, Essex Linen and, soon, Quilter's Linen (which is cotton). I'm really excited Simply Solid Fabric because it's going to grow into the best online source of solid fabrics for quilters. I'll be adding other solid lines as time goes on (I'm dreaming about shott cottons this week...).

Blueberry Buckle has all the print fabrics that are on sale right now. My goal is to clear all the fabric out of Blueberry Buckle so it can be used for its original purpose, a place to sell my finished quilts and other items for the home. Right now it's a great place to get some bargains on lots of Moda and Henry Glass fabrics, so pop on over and enhance your stash!

Both shops will be closed October 14-16 while we move.

I'll be back next week with pics of the new place, exciting news about my quilting (trunk show featuring me!) and projects, projects, projects!

Happy quilting!

Sue