And now October is nearly over!!

Yes, I’m playing catch-up once again. Deadlines get me motivated and I am presenting on the Global Quilt Connection All Star Sample Platter tomorrow… welcome to any new readers 🙂

Steve decided he needed to cut the grass before the grandchildren arrived. It has been a warm, wet summer and the grass has been lush all season long!

I’m sure they appreciated his hard work. We managed to spend quite a few hours outside with Christopher and Caroline while their parents were at Sarah’s sister’s wedding…

Closing your eyes while kicking the soccer ball is an interesting technique?

Christopher was running low on clothes and needed to borrow a t-shirt from his grandpa!!

We were glad to deliver the children back to their parents in one piece, along with their freshly laundered clothes..

Time to get packed up and head out the door to the Village Quilters of Tellico Village in Tennessee.

It was ten years since my last visit. There were some familiar faces and lots of new ones. I started off with an Improv class on  the Wednesday followed by a morning lecture on the Thursday. The quilters were a happy crowd, coming fresh off their win at Quilt Week in Grand Rapids.

Looking right…

and looking left…

We just had time for a quick three-hour Walking Foot class in the afternoon. Lots of stitching!

I was very well looked after in Loudon. Linda welcomed me to her comfortable home with open arms and drove me around and about.

No time to sit around for too long and I was off out again to visit the Flying Geese Quilt Guild in Fallston, Maryland.

Such a cheerful group of quilters for my Lessons Learned While Quilting lecture.

We had a good turn out for more Walking Foot Quilting the next day… too busy for pictures…

And then…

Time for a BIG adventure!

Ten days in England visiting friends and family.  Not a lot of pictures.

One in Trafalgar Square with our friends Graham and Gill.

And here’s on with my sister and brother. (David smiles in his heart!)

The featured image at the top of the post is an English robin, smaller and, dare I say it, cuter than an American one?

We spent time with Steve’s mom (she’s still beating us at Scrabble) and all of Steve’s siblings. It was a whirlwind tour, eight beds in ten days… a canceled flight, a missed connection… definitely an adventure.

I had my flu and Covid shots the day after we got back and they did not combine very well with jet lag. It was a good job I had ten days before I needed to pack my bags again.

Off to Sharonville (near Cincinnati) Ohio for the Original Sewing and Quilting Expo.

I had a full classroom for my Walking Foot workshop on the Wednesday. Here’s everyone hard at work, enjoying all the buttons on their machines, in the Pfaff classroom.

We had a change of pace the next morning in Hand Beading for Quilts and Fashion.

And then back to a sewing machine room, this time a BERNINA classroom for an afternoon of  Free Motion Quilting.

Now they just need to go home and practice!

I packed up my bags and headed off to the airport for the short flight home. I managed to collect my bags before Steve got to Midway so I was at the curb for a drive-thru pick-up.

I’ve had time to get some stitching done since then… nothing’s quite finished yet but I promise I will show you when I’m done. I am nearly at a million stitches on my BERNINA 770QE PRO that I brought home after Houston last year. That’s not as many stitches as I used to do when I wasn’t traveling but it’s not too shabby?

I gave a Zoom  lecture last Tuesday for the Springfield, Virginia chapter of Quilters Unlimited. I am almost ready to demo beaded edge treatments tomorrow and then I have a pair of Zooms for the Haymarket chapter of Quilters Unlimited! It will be a different lecture to the one I gave to the Springfield group. I think there are some quilters who are members of both?

And I mustn’t forget the Creative Spark Quilt Fusion event on November 5th where I will be presenting on High Def Quilting. It’s sure to be a fun filled informative event with ten presentations. If you can’t make it live then you can watch it as many times as you want afterwards!! (click on my affiliate link for a 20% discount on the event.)

And then it’s time for International Quilt Festival in Houston…

And the adventures are set to continue. I have updated my calendar for next year. There are still some dates to add that I don’t have contracts for yet… I do love my life.