Today was Day One of our next season’s taping of Quilting Arts (airing late January of next year), and it was an industrious day. Eight segments down, 31 to go!

Here I am with Penny McMorris (one of my favorite people) of Electric Quilt Company and a new acquaintance, AnneMarie Cheney, who started her local Modern Quilt Guild chapter in Columbus, OH.

AnneMarie brought her baby! Our first baby on the set! Oh, he was so adorable…I think we need an entire baby episode next season. Calling all babies with quilting mamas…

Heather Jones from the Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild came to tape, too. Wait until you see her quilt!

Ellen Anne Eddy taped three segments today. If you only know her through her art and her books, you should meet her in person. She is absolutely hilarious. In this shot she is showing me how she stores her keys (and other things) on her person.

Not only is she extremely talented, but she is cute, too…

And when not on set, she could be found entertaining Sophie Rubin in the green room. (Sophie and her mother Luana from eQuilter.com came to tape today!) Here, Ellen and Sophie are free-motion quilting a little horse drawing.

Sophie with her free-motion stitched drawing. Sophie is growing up so quickly…

More from the taping tomorrow. I am in need of some food and a little sleep.

I am happy to report that Sweetie has been adopted! Here I have spent all this time trying to get her hooked up with so many agencies and exhausted my social media efforts, when all I really needed to do was simply walk the dog through my neighborhood.

The other night I realized I had no food in the house and wanted to walk to get take-out for dinner, so I took Sweetie with me. A woman entering a restaurant saw Sweetie and just fell in love with her. Her name is Kimber and she called me yesterday morning and told me that she very much wanted to adopt Sweetie. We had a long conversation, and last night, armed with a tote of treats, a bag of dog food, six months of heart worm preventative, Sweetie’s medical records and tags, and a Ziploc baggie with a Kong filled with frozen peanut butter, Sweetie and I walked to the same location to meet her new mom. I handed her leash over to Kimber, knelt down and gave Sweetie a hug goodbye. I admit I got really choked up, and on the walk back home alone I felt very wistful yet so happy Sweetie will have a happy life ahead of her.

Sweetie’s last morning at my house, napping with Clarence.

Thank you for sharing your rescue stories and your ideas for quilters to reach out and support strays. I have printed out all of the responses and have some ideas that I will share with my team. One thing I thought about doing in the meantime is stitching some doggie bandanas that fostered dogs could wear on walks to let passers-by know they are adoptable. Something like this drawing I whipped up this morning…

When I get back from the Quilting Arts TV taping next week, I want to issue an online drive on my blog to make some so we can all drop off at our local shelters. Are you game?
Speaking of QATV, I leave this weekend for Cleveland, and beginning to pack up my segment prep:

Some very talented guests are coming next week, and I will post pictures and behind-the scenes stories when I get to Cleveland. In the meantime,  I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend! And congratulations to Becky Bowles–you won the doggie fabric! Please email me at pokeyb@quilts.com with your shipping address and I will get the fabrics to you when I return home.

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Mine was busy: I adopted another furry creature (more on that tomorrow), did some QA TV prep for our upcoming taping, and stitched a market tote for a friend who recently underwent surgery. Essentially I was closeted in my studio with my animals and a stack of DVDs, and that is how I like it.

To kick off the work week, I thought to giveaway a recent book I got from Stash Books, an imprint of C&T. It’s called Sunday Morning Quilts coauthored by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison. In it you will find 16 quilt projects to use up all those colorful scraps in your stash that you can’t bear to throw away. These projects are pretty easy and straightforward, so they are great for the budding quilter and the art quilter alike who may want to stitch up something pretty quickly.

To be in the running for this book, all you need to do is answer the following question, and I will randomly select a winner tomorrow.

Question: If you could watch a quilter in action in his/her studio, what process, technique, project would you want to watch them do? In other words, if you could watch quilt demonstrations, what kind of demos would you like? (And yes, I am asking for a reason!)

And congratulations to Wanda Myers! You are the winner from this past Friday’s fabric giveaway. Please email me at pokeyb@quilts.com with your shipping address, putting “Fabric Winner” in the subject line, and I will get these fabrics to you shortly.

Happy Monday,

I have spent some time this week looking at all of the Pinterest boards people posted in the comments section of this blog post, and I am mightily impressed by the sheer number of pins! I admit, I’m not a prolific pinner…and that’s simply because I know I would while away my nights pinning on Planet Pinterest rather than stitching in my studio.

Even if I only pin sporadically now, there is something to be said for surfing other people’s Pinterest boards because you never know what great ideas they may inspire. Take for instance this “radial” board by Hilary Frye. I love how she is using her board to explore and celebrate a simple geometric shape.

Hilary Frye’s “Radial” board. Great images and I especially like her request at the top of the board: “Please keep any photographer or artist credits associated with photos when repinning. Thank you for this courtesy. Also, please make note in the comments if credits are unidentified and you know the proper associated identity with the image.”

I also discovered a fantastic tutorial through Lynn Provencher’s ATCs–Quilted Postcards–Mug Rugs–Tags board. (What I circled below on this board caught my eye.)

I then clicked the link to the photo where this was sourced and discovered this cute little mug rug tutorial by Darci of stitchesandscissors.com.

And it got me thinking…IQF/Houston will soon be upon us, and wouldn’t it be fun to expand the trading opportunities on the show floor beyond just ATCs?

So here is my Free Fabric Friday question:
If you could create your dream trade or swap at a quilt show, what would it include?

Would it be mug rugs, or perhaps fabric postcards with recipes on the back? Or maybe ATCs in the modern quilt aesthetic, or something else entirely? Please share your ideas and thoughts in the comments area, and on Monday morning I will randomly select a winner who could win this set of fat quarters by Lotta Jansdotter for Windham Fabrics:

Have a great weekend!