Fellow Quilters,

I’ve got lots of quilty bits and bobs to share with you today. My colleague Millie laughs every time I say this. What are bits and bobs, you ask?!? Odds & ends. Tidbits.

My friend Linda Hahn of Frog Hollow and her bestie Deb Stanley host a weekly event Wednesdays at 3pm EST on Zoom called Sew What! Zoomcast – it’s quite entertaining. Linda interviews a different guest quilting celebrity each week, then Deb does a quilt-related demo, and the hour-long zoomcast winds up with prizes. Who doesn’t like free stuff?!? Past guests have included Stevii Graves, Banyan Batiks Creative Director Karen Gibbs, and last week’s guest Joyce Hughes. Joyce thread paints on quilt panels to create truly stunning pieces of art and tells me that anyone can achieve the same results. This week’s guest is the iconic Nancy Mahoney. To watch, log into Zoom using Meeting No. 708 847 7971 Password 541374. Linda has invited me to be her guest on July 15^th so mark your calendar! Same meeting and password.

Did you see my Facebook Live post on June 16 as part of the June edition of the Designers Tips & Techniques Virtual Show? You can still watch the rerun on my Patti’s Patchwork Facebook page. The video is somewhat fuzzy – of course my test run was clear as a bell. Hubby has picked up a new stronger modem so my next post should be much better. Yes, I’m doing it again. The July edition runs from noon until 8pm EST July 7 – 9 and my time slot is July 8 at 4pm. The schedule is here. I hope you’ll tune it to learn lots of quilty goodness. I watched all the episodes last month and really enjoyed it.

Fellow designer Andi is coordinating a Patriotic Quilt Mashup – a video slide show of patriotic quilts just in time for July 4^th. I shared videos of 2 quilts from my PC236A Panel Plus pattern. I snapped a photo of one of the quilts taped to the outside wall of the cabin.

Happy July 4th! PC236A Panel Plus pattern option #1

I’ll be sharing the mashup video on my Patti’s Patchwork Facebook page as soon as Andi posts it. Fun!

I’m also participating in a 1-day Christmas in July event on July 15^th (it’ll be a busy day!). Each of the 21 bloggers is sharing a freebie so you can get started on those quilty Christmas gifts. What better time to start than now? I love, love, love Christmas quilts, and will be sharing a pattern for one. If you’re a blog subscriber you’ll automatically receive the link.

Also happening the week of July 13 – 17 is the awesome Quilt Designer Shop Hop – 10 designers – 10 websites – 10 blocks. Each designer has created a block for this fun virtual hop and will be sharing it for free during the hop. We created our blocks in Electric Quilt, so each of us will also be coming up with unique layouts for these stellar blocks. I’ll be blogging and Facebooking (is that even a word?!?) on July 16 as part of this exciting event.

In my last post I shared a photo of my mammoth-leaf basil plant and asked for advice on how to help it flourish. Well, my SIL came to my rescue and suggested that, when I want to harvest some, I prune it from the top, thereby ensuring that the plant doesn’t start to flower. I googled this and, sure enough, if I cut a stem just above a 2-leaf split, I can force the plant to grow 2 stems where 1 existed. I’ll let you know in a week or 2 if this is successful.

I also had to resort to google to fix my broken sewing chair. The hydraulics were dying a quick death. Every 5 minutes I had to lift the seat back up. The quick fix I saw online, if I don’t mind the chair being always at a fixed height, was to remove the base, insert a length of PVC pipe and reattach the base.

My steno sewing chair with a quick fix

My handy son had a spare piece of pipe, so 15 minutes later my chair was fixed (for me). I’m a happy camper! I’ll eventually paint it, but for now it’s good :).

I’ll see you in a week or so. In the meantime, Happy Canada Day and Happy 4^th of July!