Hello Quilt Con! My name is Stitching and Bacon

I often like to start a blog post by stating where I am located while I am typing these words. Usually it is some tiny little town in a generic hotel room for work and sometimes I am at my desk at home in North Carolina.

Today, I am in a plane over the earth on my way to Austin, Texas. I am going to QUILT CON! 

Pause for a second, can I say that again? I am going to Quilt Con. I can hardly believe it. This is such a huge treat for me. It has been planned for months and it is finally here.  It feels like Christmas, Hannukah, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Easter, and my birthday all rolled into one.

Okay, now that I am sort of over that. Are you going to Quilt Con? Can we meet? I am going to have buttons to trade or just give you.

I am going to start this epic blog post by telling you the ways you can find me at Quilt Con.

Firstly, I am taking two classes. Victoria Findley Wolf’s Modern String of Florid Blooms and Yoshiko Jinzenji’s Sheer Fabrics—Silhouette Pillow. I am also volunteering on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday as a classroom assistant and in the lecture hall.

I have two quilts in the show. Please visit them!

You may remember Fade to Black. I love this quilt. More information about this quilt here.

The quilt you may not have seen is Paint Chip.  This quilt deserves its own blog post so I am going to keep this brief here. Rainbows make me happy and this quilt makes me so happy… This quilt feels like it brings its own sunshine.

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I am going to be honest about this, I was nervous to share these quilts and tell you I have quilts in the show. There was so much chatter on the Internet about getting into the show and or not getting into the show. I don’t want to seem like I am too modest or brag too much. It is a hard line to tow sometimes.

Okay, off this subject. Talking about these things is hard for me.

I thought I would give you some fun facts about myself! I love lists!

1. Despite my blog name and adorable pig. I am allergic to mammal meat. So, I can’t eat bacon. It is an allergy from ticks, the moral of this story is that bug spray is good and I miss bacon.

2. For my day job, I am an archaeologist. This is not unrelated to fact one.  I travel a ton for work.

3. I grew up in the Portland, Oregon, which is where my parents still live. I moved to Colorado when I was 18 to go to college. I met my husband in college and then I followed him to North Carolina. Until I did that, I swore I would never move for a man. I have never ever regretted my decision to 

move.

4. I am addicted to Pilates and Barre. I try to go to at least 4 classes a week when I am home.

5. My house is under 900 square feet and we have 12 quilts in our living room.

6.  I love to cook. My husband and I cook dinner together almost every night.

7. My favorite colors are blue, pink, and I love everything with cats on it. I am also super into kitsch.

I hope we get to meet at Quilt Con if you are going. If not, I promise to recap as much as I can. You should follow me on instagram (@stitchingandbacon) for the play-by-play.

Love you all friends! I hope you are having a great week!

Winter Blues. Notes from the road.

Hey there! How are you doing?

Are you warm, cold.... so sick of winter you want to scream, wrap yourself in a quilt and hibernate? I am in Atlanta right now, sitting on my hotel room bed. Tomorrow is a new exciting day of work.

I am feeling pretty dang good right now. I just got back from Florida. I have a tan/sunburn, I slept about 10 hours every night in Florida. We also had an ice storm in North Carolina this morning.

Lest you hate me, I will tell you I left for my first of three work trips starting today and I will likely be home for no more than two nights in a row for the next month. Those trips are not vacations and they typically involve driving long distances, eating gross fast food, and time away from my sewing machine (and husband and cat)...

No sense in worrying about things you can't change!

I am feeling a titch overwhelmed with sewing projects, so I thought I would write out a list. It is aspirational, somewhat deadlined, some sort of pie in the sky projects. In no particular order.

1.) Finish the binding on my cousin's quilt. This was a group project with some of my Aunts and cousins, and it is going to another cousin. My job was quilting and binding. Now I need to finish it, I have had this way too long! This needs to get done, like next week.

2.) Finish secret bag project. This super tote is all cut out and ready to piece, which is good because it needs to be gifted next weekend. It should wrap up quickly though.

3.) Handmade Birthday Club March Gifts. I have two to make for this month. No biggie, these will be fun and quick finishes.

4.) Quilt Boy Quilt. This is a charity quilt for my dear friend Val. The top is all pieced and pressed. It just needs to be quilted and bound. It will be super fast once I get it basted. I need to get it done because there is an orphan out there who will be stoked to receive this!

5.) Derek Quilt. The dearest husband in the whole wide world is getting his very own quilt as soon as I can get time to piece it. It is all cut and waiting. I am pretty excited about this (Derek's quilt is actually to the left, ignore the cranes and text).

6.) Parent's Anniversary Quilt. Parent's wedding anniversary is in June. I want to make them a queen sized bed quilt. They have been warned it will be late.

7.) Hop Skip Jump BOM. I am two blocks behind on this BOM, but that is no biggie. This will take but a tiny bit of time to catch up on.

8.) Club Medallion. I am a million borders behind (slight exaggeration). Working on this would be a dream.

9.) Sparkly love Tangelo. I so want to work on this. Realistically, this is not a priority, but because I want to I will move it up on my list.

10.) Backbone quilt. I want to make one, so I suspect I will.

That is super long. I think I will stop there, although I can already think of things to add. I will be focusing on the first couple of items this weekend and then begin to tackle the rest. I think I will be traveling with my machine a bit this spring, which is a prime piecing opportunity. It is also possible that I will travel with a cutting mat and get some piecing set up.

I love you all! Thanks for being there. Thanks for being awesome.

The Migration Quilt [Planes, Trains, and Automobiles]

I decided to start tonight's blog post with a list.

Fun facts to catch you up with me:

1.) In the past three weeks I have been in eight states. I only slept in three of them.

2.) I am leaving again tomorrow.

3.) I have achieved diamond status with my hotel reward program. That means I have spent over 40 nights in Choice Hotels this year. This would be less sad if I only stayed in that brand of hotels, but that is not true. The actual number of nights in a hotel room is much higher.

4.) Some of my dearest sewing friends and I hung out this weekend. We drank milkshakes, ate pizza, and bought a lot of fabric.

5.) I learned about life mistakes and then I bought more Collage. This entire visit deserves its own blog post.

6.) Today I ate a chocolate croissant and took a pilates class. I think those two events neutralize each other.

There you go, caught up with me. Don't you just feel like we had a cup of coffee together? Except if we had coffee together, you could have added your things too. Then we could have talked about how good your hair looks and I could have asked you where you got those shoes.

I finished another quilt on the plane to in Denver. Then I gave it away the next day.

I improvised a photo shoot, 'cause I wanted to show this awesome finish with you.

I made this quilt for Derek's grandparents, we call them Gammie and Grandad. They are amazing people.

Gammie is a quilter and a former high school math teacher. Grandad is a retired engineer. So, I new this quilt had to have some math. I also knew it had to be good. So, I used some of my precious architextures and I worked super hard.

I think they really liked it. Little know fact, quilters are the best people to gift quilts. They appreciate them tons and they know how to use those quilts. They were both totally surprised and excited. This is technically a birthday present for them both. Gammie just turned 82 a few weeks ago and Grandad is turning 83 in January. I hope they don't mind me sharing this on the internet...

Gammie and Grandad assured me they would snuggle under this one all winter.

That sort of makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Thanks for tolerating me friends. Love you bundles.

Sarah

Quilt Stats:
Quilt Name: Migration
Quilt pattern: Mine, though, I know this block has a name. Shall we just call it *%&$%^ bias seams?
Fabric: Caroline Friedlander's Architextures, Simply Style by V and Co, and a great deal of Essex linen from Robert Kaufman.
Quilting: My lazy infinity quilting, quilted and pieced with Aurifil thread
Size: Ha! Like I remembered to measure before I gave this away.

PS - All photos on this page were taken with my iPhone. I apologize for this, I just did not have room to pack the dslr. We will be back to regularly scheduled photos next time I finish a quilt.

Travel Stashing [Sunday Stash]

I returned from Portland on Saturday and I wanted to share some of the precious fabric I bought in PDX. 

Okay, so Portland has this thriving crafting community. I passed more yarn stores in this city than I really think most cities of any size could support. The fabric stores made me so happy! We were carrying on our luggage so I tried to only buy unique or special fabrics... umm.. mostly. 

I met up with my friend Janelle, who is also a quilter (squee!) and has known me since I was an awkward freshman in high school. We went to Bolt first. I fell in love with this store and it is just packed with fabric. I mean seriously amazing. A pretty fair range of linens, quilting cottons, home dec cottons, and some garment stuff too. Also, clearly, their buyer has my sense of style.

I got some Japanese linen fabric and a couple of fat quarters that made me smile.

Then I dragged my friend Janelle to Cool Cottons (and my husband, incidentally, guess who was less excited). This store is seriously a quilter's paradise. Also, they seem to still have some out of print lines. Hello Heather Ross, I have missed you.

The Japanese selection was most definitely the highlight. I am a sucker for misspellings on anything (professionally) made. Naturally, I had to buy these Japanese fabrics. Um, 10 points if you find the mistake in the English. Double pat on the back if you see the mistake in the German.

You see, my husband is studying German history, speaks German, and has lived in Germany. He needed this fabric (he would tell me, he did not need this fabric). It is also super politically incorrect. That child with the feathers in her hair, umm, Native American? 

This is my first time linking up to Sunday Stash on Finding Fifth, hosted by Pretty Bobbins. If you are new to my little space, welcome, thanks for visiting, nice to meet you. 

xoxo,
Sarah

Hello from Savannah.

Hi friends.

I am in Savannah. I do not have internet.

I am watching a show called "The United States of Bacon." I can't eat bacon. I am allergic. I love bacon.

I had to go to someone else's apartment to write you this little note.

Mostly, I am just writing this email to you to say hi.

Hi.

I have a tutorial to share. Unfortunately, I agreed to write a book review for an archaeology journal, now I have to read the book. That means, time I can't sew or write tutorials.

Do not worry, I brought my sewing machine to Savannah. I am sewing. A tiny bit.  I made an adorable little lap top case. Mostly, I am sewing secret things for my secret sister partner these [secret] projects make me so happy. I will show them to you after my partner sees them.

I promise to be back soon. I will finish the tutorial. I will take photos.

In this post I give you bee blocks I have finished and sent away.

Meanwhile, I will be out working in a garbage filled roadside. I mention this least you think my job is glamourous. This is why I am allergic to bacon. Le sigh.

This is a teaser for the tutorial I am going to share. Rainbows!