Hello all, Mary Ellen here.

Life is ever so slowly returning to some normalcy. I’m trying to plan visits to my mom as just one more thing to do each week and to not worry about them so much. We’ve been lucky to find a great crew of aides who are taking very good care of her. …But it’s my mom so you know how that goes.

Our guild seminar went well. Pat Sloan was a hit among all who took her classes. Even several ladies who said they didn’t really quilt in Pat’s style came out at the end of the day having loved the class. Just shows how if you go into a class with an open mind, you are hardly ever disappointed. (Many of you missed a great opportunity by not giving her a try. Don’t make the same mistake with next year’s guest: Bonnie Hunter of quiltville.com.) Pat is very friendly and easy to talk to–no “diva” tendencies that we have experienced from some of our national teachers in the past. We were told that she made all feel at ease, sharing so much of her own knowledge and industry insider info. I’m hoping that stories from members who took classes from her are going to be shared at our meetings and other quilty get-togethers.

I got to chat with many quilters during the course of the week. Some were members of our guild who I already knew, and I made some new acquaintances as well. From one of them I learned of a new quilt blog and group that I had not heard of before: The Bad A** Quilters Society. (Those asterisks are mine–hoping not to offend any of you!) I explored the website a bit and decided I’d be going back to see even more. Well guess what!? In one of my e-mails this morning from a group I subscribe to, a project from the Bad A** group was shared. I think it could make a great, relatively quick and easy, gift idea. We all are always on the look out for those. This one could work with scraps, or you could pull together coordinated fabrics too. Here’s a link to the project: click here. While you’re there, have a look around at the rest of the site and see if it matches your philosophy of quilting. Don’t have one? Think about that: why do you quilt? What’s in it for you? Answering that question is your last chance to enter a comment in our 40,000 hit blog candy give away!!! At the end of this week I’ll start choosing names randomly from all the comments entered since I first announced the commenting contest. Great Prizes coming up, you don’t want to miss out.