The few days I spent at Mountain QuiltFest last week were wonderful. I totally disengaged from all social media and most news reports. Know what? I slept well each night because I wasn’t mindlessly scrolling on my phone in the evenings.
Personally, I haven’t posted on FB or Instagram in months. Guess I’ve become a bit contrary in my sixth decade. I’m also not on Twitter, TikTok or any similar platform. This blog and Pinterest are about the only places where I share and save things. I do follow certain quilting, lifestyle and retirement-related content creators on YouTube, but I try to be mindful of the time spent watching said videos.
Several of the social media best practices essays I read suggested that I choose one platform and interact with my chosen platform using only the website interface. Turn off all notifications and delete all social media apps from my phone. Hmmm. Let’s give it a go.
The Book of Faces is probably the one I use most and it’s primarily for neighborhood updates and sewing related groups in which I participate. I also tend to use messenger to contact folks for whom I don’t have a phone number. IG, YT and Pinterest are now off my phone. I’ve also turned off all but the most critical notifications for everything else. We’ll see if it helps.
Hey, if someone really needs to get a hold of me, they can via phone call, text or email.
It arrived today wrapped in a nondescript plastic shopping bag – a mostly finished quilt. Last summer, my sister-in-law had asked me to finish the quilt for her youngest daughter, Miss M, in case she wasn’t able to complete it before she passed away. Kathy’s funeral was in early March. It took several weeks for her daughters to locate all the bits and pieces to the quilt. Hubs went to visit his folks for Father’s Day and brought it home with him.
The quilt is already spray basted with a few spots of ditch quilting. The brown binding strips were already cut. All I need to do is quilt, bind and add a label. Miss M chose an all-over big loopy meander for the quilting design in gold thread. Sadie & I will try to pick up gold thread tomorrow, along with brown hand quilting thread. This special quilt deserves to have the binding stitched by hand.
Once finished, I’ll ask Miss M if she wants to pick it up on her way through ATL next month or have it shipped to her in Boston.
My favorite type of quilty travel happened this week – an event with classes, shopportunity and pretty quilts to see – Mountain QuiltFest in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It’s a regional quilt show that attracts national teaching faculty. I really like the work of two west-coast based instructors teaching this year, so I took advantage of the opportunity to take classes with them close to home.
At least one solo quilty adventure each year seems to be the norm for me since retirement. It’s a time to focus exclusively on quilting and whatever else I want to do. Outside of classes and viewing the quilts, I can be as social as I choose to be. This year included a dinner event with Edyta Sitar (where I ran into four members from my quilt guild who’d come up to get quilt appraisals and check out potential instructors for the guild to bring to ATL in 2026 and 2027). There was also an evening show & tell, antique quilt lectures and a local quilt tour. Severe thunderstorms arrived just as my final class ended. I took myself out to dinner at a local Italian restaurant and spent the stormy evening stitching in my hotel room.
Classes with Edyta Sitar and Krista Moser were wonderful. I completed all the log cabin blocks in the Pioneer Log Cabin class with Mrs. Sitar. I even won one of her autographed books as a door prize!
For Krisa Moser’s class, once I understood the preparation and process for handling diamonds and pieced equilateral triangles, block assembly went quickly. The goal was for each student to complete at least 3 blocks by the end of class. She demonstrated how to assemble the quilt top by using all of the student blocks as her example. Here’s a sample Vintage Windmill layout utilizing blocks from 17 students:
Here’s one of my blocks:
I completed the required 3 blocks in class. The rest of the time was spent cutting diamonds from my pre-cut strips and assembling strip sets/cutting equilateral triangles for each hexie block. Next week will be spent getting the rest of the diamonds cut out and the pieced triangles made (12 required for each block).
Everyone I met in classes and in the show area was raving about how good this year’s event was. I concur. It was definitely the right call to attend this event in lieu of some other events I typically do this time of year. A return in 2026 depends how it works with my guild’s big quilt show to be held June 4-6, 2026.
Random stuff: My stay at the Best Western Plus Apple Valley Lodge on the Parkway was comfortable and convenient. Tips: Request a non-balcony room on an upper floor if you like maximum quiet and privacy. The parking garage exits to a street that runs behind the property. Go two blocks over toward the Hampton Inn. There’s a traffic signal that will make left turns much easier. Traffic on the Parkway can be a nightmare. My plan is to stay at a hotel closer to the LeConte Center next time.
Come Stitch With Me 