The Pacific International Quilt Festival in October is one of the best in our area. It's at the Santa Clara Convention Center. There are also a lot of regional ones by individual guilds, such as Diablo Valley, Livermore's, East Bay, Benicia and so forth. If you join a local guild, you usually get notices of all the local shows each month in your newsletter. If you want to go farther afield, the big show in Ontario is the Road to California which starts Jan 22nd. I go every so often and it's large and offers lots of classes, except it's too late now to get into most. We're lucky to live in the bay area because we have so many resources.

I've been working a little on my paper-pieced birds of paradise wall hanging. My language gets so "colorful" when I PP with all the strange angles and shapes that this project has. I swear that I rip one seam for every two I sew. As my husband says when he hits a bad golf shot - your choice of words is so limited at a time like this. As much as I don't miss the Minnesota winter, I really miss my Minnesota sewing room. Here on Maui, I have to get everything out and then put everything away every time I sew. I know some of you have to do that all the time, but I don't think I would ever get a project finished if I had to. If I only have an hour to sew and I have to spend 10 minutes on either end to set up and take down, I always find something else to do - like read. Therefore, I'm getting a lot of reading done but not as much quilting as I'd like. Oh, well, we'll be home in three weeks and then I'll be complaining about the weather. LOL

My July goals are to quilt and bind the restored View from the Cabin quilt that I gave to my neighbor several years ago. Her dog ate several huge holes in it; she "unquilted" the whole quilt; I repaired the top as best I could (being unable to find more matching fabric); and it's now glue basted and ready to re-quilt. I hope to finish my nephew's Winter Windows quilt top and get it off to the longarmer. I'm working on a Summer in the Park quilt with a jelly roll of marbled batiks that I got in a scrap bag and a piece of WOW that my friend gave me. I also have to go through a 12" high stack of patterns and magazines that this same friend gave me. Most of the patterns are for appliqués, which I don't often do, but the magazines have some interesting patterns in them. I'd also like to quilt the two lotto winnings quilt tops that I have pieced and get them into the "Done" pile.

Beth, So far, I don't see anything 'wonky' about this. I don't think I've ever seen Prairie Points that weren't used at the edges of a quilt, so this sounds interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing this completed. FWIW, I used seersucker as a backing on my now 26 year old DGS's baby quilt. It was washed almost weekly for the first 6-8 years with no problems, and used sporadically after that. A few years ago, my DD told me that as a teenager and when he still lived at home, he would get it out when he didn't feel well and wrap up in it. Yes, he does have a larger quilt, but this is the one that comforts him the most. Anyway, that seersucker fabric stayed the course. lol