Long Time No Write......

Sorry about the lapse in blogging that I've had recently. The last couple of weeks has been so crazy I swear I see myself going when I'm coming.

I've been plugging away on my three quilts for Quilter's World magazine. My deadline is in the end of September. I have two of the quilts almost completed and I'm making the top for the third quilt right now. I hope to have it at least into the binding phase by the end of the week.

I did receive some disappointing news about my first fabnric collection for Northcott, Louetta's Garden. It was bumped from an October Launch to a spring launch. Although I am disappointed, it does make a lot more sense for it to debut in the spring -- it is a "garden" collection. I will also be designing exclusive patterns to feature the fabrics in my collection, so you will have to stay tuned for these designs.

It's funny, though, because I am now finding inspiration in so many things from old scraps of shredding wallpaper to the skirt of a vintage dress on display in a museum to dirty old rugs. I must admit that I am nowed hooked on textiles and designing! Oh, but what a wonderful addiction!

I was reading an article on quilting today -- did you know that the quilting industry is a 3.58 billion dollar industry annually? WOW! I knew the quilt industry was growing but I had no idea -- how exciting to be part of that industry now. It makes me feel even more inspired!

My garden has also been producing a lot of wonderful goodies, too -- so much it's hard to keep up with it. Tonight for dinner we are having stuffed pepppers and corn on the cob along with applesauce. Yep, you guessed it -- the peppers and corn are fresh from the garden a few hours ago and the applesauce was made fresh on Sunday (two days ago) with our very own apples. It's a lot of hard work to put up fruits and veggies for the winter, but oh so wonderful when there's three feet of snow on the ground. Our two apple trees (macintosh and courtland -- yes, I'm a northern girl) are having a bumper year. We didn't spray them so our apples have spots and blemishes BUT there are so many. It was windy on Sunday and I must have picked up at least 50 apples off the ground. That, of course, is not including the laundry basket I picked on the tree on Saturday.

A week ago, I went on a bus trip to Berlin, OH. It was a lovely visit to the heart of OH Amish country. We visited several quilt shops and I checked out three or four antique malls. Of course I brought home a new vintage quilt! I'll try to get a picture posted soon. The best part, of course, was spending the day with my two best friends, Leslie and Cathey. Oh, and the cheese factory was great -- I bought some mediterranean sunset cheddar cheese -- YUM!

The local fair, the Crawford County Fair, which is the largest agricultural fair in PA, ended this past week end. I was very pleased with the quilts that I entered. Six quilts yielded six ribbons -- 1 blue, 2 red, and 3 white. I was very surpised because the competition is usually quite intense -- there are a lot of talented quilters in this area.

Okay, I think I'm all caught up now. Time to get back to work.