Back From Vacation Update – Quilt Friends Podcast #112

Hello My Quilting Friends! It’s hard to believe it’s been an entire month since I’ve said those words! I took a “vacation” through July and you’ll have to watch / listen to this podcast to see why I keep putting that word in quotation marks:

Listen to the podcast or download it to your computer using this player:

A few quick links to things I mentioned in the podcast:

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Writing the Book of My Heart

My #1 goal in July was to focus on the goddess quilt book exclusively. I thought I had the rough draft done and was ready to edit and then be laying out the book with photos in August.

But this book turned out to be a lot more complicated than that. The text I’d written simply wasn’t right. I couldn’t believe I’d spent 6 months writing in the wrong direction!

It took a few weeks of more crazy writing tangents before I finally gave up writing in Word and switched to my book design program. Here I could arrange the pictures on the page with the words and began crafting the book I’d always wanted to create.

This book changed titles a few times during this process and I’ve now settled on Leah Day’s Goddess Quilts, Journey into Light and Love Through Art Quilting.

It also had babies! I have two other, fully outlined books to write down the road! There was a lot of extra techniques and skill builders that just didn’t end up fitting in this book so I pulled it out and placed all that safely in separate files to play with some other day.

Quilt Projects In Progress

As I wrote Goddess Quilts, I found it much easier to prioritize work on the goddess quilts I’d had in progress for a very long time. After writing the introduction, I decided it was finally time to finish my very first goddess – a cross stitch Mother Earth:

Cross stitch is SLOW, but you know, just taking a few stitches every day really can make a difference. It won’t be unfinished forever if progress is being made!

I also pieced 400 little hexagons for this nutzo version of Express Your Love!

As I finished the turned edge applique, I decided to turn this version into my first goddess throw quilt. As soon as this idea popped into my head, I ran across a set of Hawaiian quilt blocks I made years ago to add to the borders.

For the inner borders, I’ve designed a simple landscape and pieced many strip sets so I can keep with the scrappy effect from the goddess in the center.

Writing this book is pushing me to finish the projects I’ve been hanging onto for years and to fully commit to my goddess quilt series. Of all the things I’ve created, these quilts are uniquely to me and it’s high time I focus on teaching this. I’m reading Essentialism again to help me focus on this highest priority!

Longarm Room Remodel Started

The break from making new videos, editing, and writing blog posts gave me a lot of time to think and plan for the future. I’ve loved diving deeper into longarm quilting in the past few months and I love being a dealer! I want to double down on these efforts and make even more longarm quilting videos.

I also want to expand my longarm frame from 8 feet to 10 feet so I can quilt bigger quilts. In order to expand the frame, I also had to shift my machine embroidery station to another wall. All around, this has been a huge change to this small room!

I can’t wait to wrap this remodel up so I can expand the frame to 10 feet. I’ve also decided to add a Gliding Rail which will give me even more space to quilt. It’s so exciting to be making these changes to the longarm room to become an even better quilting teacher and longarm dealer.

What a Terrific Summer!

I know the amount of work we’ve been doing definitely makes our vacation not seem like much of a vacation. But we have had a terrific time hanging out in the pool, baking cookies and pies, and canning the largest amount of tomatoes ever!

We traveled to Greensboro, NC for the Junior Olympics as well and had a relaxing stay at the O’Henry Hotel, which I highly recommend. Make sure to reserve a spot for afternoon High Tea! While James didn’t win a medal, he is a Junior Olympian in karate now and I’m couldn’t be more proud.

That is it for this summer recap! It’s been a crazy busy month and I’m so happy to have taken a break from making videos so I could focus on the most important and essential things in my life. I’m also happy to be back to making podcasts and tutorials and sharing my love of quilting with you.

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

More Hello My Quilting Friends Podcast Episodes:

• #111 – Unpacking from Quilt Fantastic
• #110 – The Game of Perfection
• #109 – A Short Story from Quilst
• #108 – Organize and Decorate Your Sewing Space with Stephanie Socha
• #107 – 7 Reasons Why I DO Want and Need a Longarm
• #106 – Can I Become a 1 Project Person?
• #105 – Time Lapse Quilting with Todd DuBay
• #104 – Painting the Rabbit Hutch and Puttering Around
• #103 – Meet Laura Hendrickson, the National Quilt Museum Registrar!
• #102 – Do You Ever Sleep?
• #101 – Quit Gaming and Start Quilting with Luann Fischer
• #100 – Happy Episode 100!