Back with a vengance....and a great tutorial!

Hello SassyFans!

I am so thrilled to be back and blogging here on our SassyBlog - it has been a long hiatus! In fact, I imagine most of you don't even know me. I am the other half of the SassyPacks team - the daughter, the beginning quilter, the one who spends nearly all her time in our quilt studio saying "that seems too hard."  :)

I haven't been blogging here for the past year or so as I have been on sort of a personal journey - and a literal one, I suppose! I recently had the privilege of spending about 8 months living in Nicaragua, helping to open a clinic for women and children. While I got to take a little quilting with me, I just didn't have much time to blog here, so I am thrilled to be back in the US, where I can quilt and design and blog at will.

When I left for Nicaragua (if you want to see what I was up to, check out Clinica Verde), I basically ditched my old life - sold nearly everything and made a clean break.  Now that I am back, I am resettling into a more familiar life, and once again setting up a living space.  When I was pitching the remnants of my old life, the first - and I do mean FIRST - things to go were the cluttery things....knick-knacks, decorative items, candles, dust collectors, all of them.  Turns out, now that I am back, I am left with a home full of functional furniture and zero personality.  Thus springs the inspiration for today's tutorial - using your beautiful fabrics as wall hangings.

New Iron

My iron died a few days ago; it just stopped heating up. Of course, you can't quilt without an iron. So off I went to look for the perfect new iron. My idea of the perfect iron is probably really different than most quilters.

I'm on the hunt for cheap! Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly impressed with a $200 Rowenta - but I know myself! I know I won't empty the "tap" (eek!) water when I turn it off. I know I won't buy distilled water for it. I won't wipe it down or shine it up, either!

Oh, the little angel

I got up long before the sun this morning to go out to my daughter's house and take my granddaughter to daycare. My daughter had an early morning flight for an out-of-town meeting and her husband, a teacher, had a meeting before school this morning.

I sat in the playroom outside her bedroom reading a book while I waited for her to wake up. She'll be 2 years old the middle of November and she sleeps in a toddler bed now.

As the sun started to dawn, I heard her talking and rustling around. I opened her door, peeked in and she exclaimed "Grandma!!" (oh my melting heart).

Then, as I picked her up, she said, "I want Grandpa."   Crash.