High on the (very) short list of things to love about living here: spending the weekend quilting (and eating and sleeping) in an 850-year-old monastery. The Kloster Schöntal, to be exact. The condensed version: good food, good company, good quilting, happy weekend.

The uncut version: Kloster Schöntal is about one hour from my house, the last 20 minutes or so through little towns and scenic curvy roads. The Black Forest Quilt Guild has held it’s spring Quilt Retreat there every year for the last three, I think, and it’s just wonderful. The monastery has been modernized of course, but not to the point of losing it’s essence. We had a giant well lit room for quilting, and single or double rooms for sleeping. They feed us five times a day (yes, FIVE!): breakfast, coffee and tea break with pretzels and savory pastries, lunch, coffee or tea break with sweet cakes, and dinner, and drinks are available anytime. There’s plenty of room for everyone to spread out everywhere, for relaxing, quilting, talking, quilt basting, Irish dancing (really!), whatever. Read the rest of this entry »

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Really, that seems like the only place I’ve been quilting, for the last week or so, except for Saturday night! I’ve been working a lot on web pages for clients, with no time for fun. But, in the relatively small bit of quilting time that I did have on Saturday, I packed in some true constructive-ness and problem solving. Remember the UFO Birthday party that wasn’t a party because I needed help with the quilting designs? Well, after a couple of months to stew about it (well, three and a half months, actually), I finally decided that I would do the grid after all, but use silk thread for that and the stippling around the plates. The difference is amazing! Check this out:

Now you see the dimension, but it doesn’t have that “thready” look to it since the silk just blends with the fabric so well and it’s much finer than the cotton. Soooo much better! It’s still going to take forever to quilt the grids and stippling, but at least it will look good. The only other problem (and it’s a bit of a biggee): I realized while I was looking it over deciding what to do that some of the burgundy dye has bled through to the back where I’ve misted the quilt with water after quilting to partially remove the blue marker. GRRRR! Yes, the fabric was prewashed (I always do), but it was a VIP fabric from, um, 12 years or so ago, and I’m told that VIP fabrics are the cheapo stuff. Ugh. Didn’t know that when I bought it of course. So here I’ve spent all this time hand appliquéing these Dresden Plate blocks and sewing and quilting, only to have the dyes run. Well, no more misting with water, I’ll just dunk it in the washer when finished with Synthrapol and hope for the best.

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1. Changed my blog layout a bit, so it has three columns instead of two and there’s less “stuff” all over.
2. Wondered if the whole site is just confusing as is, with the home link that goes to the main site, and needs a complete re-do.
3. Decided I really don’t have time for that complete re-do right now. Maybe over the summer?
4. Sold some stuff on ebay and shipped it all out.
5. Bought some quilting stuff and Photoshop 7 software on ebay with my money!
6. Finished doing the taxes, I think. (OUCH! It’s not pretty!:()
7. Started the site redesign programming that I’m doing pro bono for a non-profit organization.
8. Took DD#1 to get her hair cut, always stressful!
9. Quilting?? Um, I don’t remember, but I hope I did. Oh, yeah, maybe I did over the weekend…
10. Took DD#2 to her flute lesson and poured lavish praise on her for cleaning her art desk (aka “the pit”).
11. Heard about a German company (it’s even close by!) that makes sewing furniture like you can get all over in the States, so as soon as we recover from the tax beating, I can get the sewing cabinet of my dreams finally!
12. Planned a charity quilt project (for the QOV Foundation) to take to the BFQG quilt retreat next weekend. Hopefully, I’ll have time this week to take the plan further toward reality.
13. Got a bit stressed out over whether the Stars in my Hand quilt would make it to the AQS show before the judging/showing deadline! It did, with not one day to spare. Note to self: mail SOONER next time!

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