Everything's Moving Along

Slowly but surely . . .

I decided I'm really not crazy about hand piecing these small Dear Jane blocks. I'll do it if I have to but I'm very clumsy at it and need lots and lots of practice I guess. Larger blocks might not be so bad. This block seemed to take forever and it's not even that difficult. Maybe it will look better once I sew on the triangles, square it up and press it. 

Kudos to all the quilters who have hand pieced and hand quilted the entire quilt. The fact that I stitched many of mine by machine does not bother me at all. I know I would not have gotten this far if I had to do it all by hand and hadn't taken advantage of my machine or paper piecing. Much easier for me. 

That blue one sure has some wonky corner piecing but I still love it and think it's looking good. I swear if someone had told me ten years ago I'd be doing stuff like this (taking all this time to make so many of these small blocks with such teeny tiny [and often difficult] pieces) I would have laughed out loud and told them they were crazy. You just never know . . . .

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I've also been busy finishing up the final editing on my page proofs for the new book, which arrived last week. Poring over them and over them to make sure everything is correct (unlike the slightly careless way I go over my blog posts before I hit Publish - Hah!)

It's so much fun to see everything laid out with nice photos. These are the page proofs, which are merely sample pages of the final version of the book. Kind of like a trial run. This is the last chance to catch any mistakes or make corrections before it's all ready to go to the printer this summer. There are still a few things that need to get done by the publisher but everything has been moving along. That top page you see with my name on it? That's just the inside title page, not the cover. There is no cover yet. When my publisher sends me the cover and tells me I can show that I will. Everything in its own time. 

Have a great Memorial day weekend!  Time to pull out my favorite red, white and blue quilts. 

How lucky am I??  My friend Sue Bennett gifted me with this adorable little tumbler flag quilt! I've always wanted one.