It’s pouring here in Boston today.  I’m hoping it will turn into a perfect quilting day for me though!  I am on a self imposed deadline to finish a quilt for a submission to a magazine.

Saturday my mom, oldest daughter and myself attended the Sewing Expo in Worcester, MA.  It was fun to attend a show like that where it wasn’t dedicated to only quilts.  There was a nice quilt gallery to walk through and lots of vendors that offered eye candy for both sewing and quilting enthusiasts.  My daughter was thankful it didn’t take all day to get through! After the show we headed over to the local ice rink to watch my niece participate in a figure skating competition and then out for dinner.  It was a really fun day.  I picked up some Sulky Blendable 30 wt. variegated threads and I am completely in love with them!!!!  They are beautiful and easy to use.  I can’t wait to do more with them and to purchase more colors.

Monday night was my quilt guild meeting.  The speaker was Ursula Kern of Switzerland.  She is known for her use of color and fabric collage.  My mom and I came home from the meeting totally inspired to give the string piecing technique that Ursula uses a try.  We set up our sewing machines, pulled out the perfect scraps we wanted, got the iron heating up and just as we got ready to take the first stitches…the power went out!!!!!!  Ugh!  You would have laughed if you could have seen our faces!  The power was out for an hour during which time we worked on some hand embroidery and beading by the light of the window.  At the first sign of the power coming back on, we ran back up to the sewing room and got started again!  The picture below is our first efforts at this technique.  Mine is the pink/yellow combo, mom’s is the blue/yellow combo. Ursula’s of course are much larger and depict some type of scene that she was sketched out.

Well, enjoy the day! I’m off to quilt!