In November I’ll be attending Sewtopia in Salt Lake City with my mom. About a week and a half ago I got a package in the mail from them

Yup! I got fabric for a challenge. At first I was rather surprised, as I didn’t sign up for the challenge…I’ll have to ask my mom if she got the random fabric because I know she didn’t sign up for it either. However, after having a bit of a think about it I decided, why not? I’ve never taken part in a challenge before and heck, I went to art school (majored in theatrical lighting design, but there were art classes in there).

Part of the rules are that you can ONLY use Michael Miller fabric so the first thing I did was raid my stash and read all the little salvages to see what Michael Miller fabric I owned. Not too much. Robert Kaufman, no problem. Moda, I have plenty. So I took what little I had and began looking through books of blocks and quilts. After some back and forth I found a pattern out of a block book and decided this would be the perfect time to try out my new Electric Quilt software (EQ7). That software is not the most intuitive from the outside, sheesh. Let’s just say after finally getting the block drafted I was able to figure out how to import the fabrics I’ll be using (after racking up a big ‘ol fabric.com bill buying those fabrics). I colored in blocks, moved blocks around, recolored…eventually I had a design I was happy with and I’ve been sewing ever since, that would be about 3 days now.

I’d love to show you progress but I am going to keep it under wraps until I go to Sewtopia.

In the meantime take a look at this

Someone on Twitter, or maybe Instagram mentioned that they use this tool to square up their quilts! Brilliant. It shoots out two lasers to make a 90 degree angle. My wonderful husband bought it for me as soon as I said I wanted it. One click on Amazon, too easy. I can’t wait to use it on my Sprouts quilt (I need a better name for that one) whose top I have now completed by the way, but it has taken a back seat to the Sewtopia Challenge for now.