Row by Row Experience starts today!

This year's Row by Row Experience runs from today, June 21st through September 6. I'm looking forward to going out shop hopping this summer and collecting row patterns. Of course, I have a project box that contain kits and patterns from last summer that I haven't finished. I plan to only collect patterns this year. I'm sure I won't be able to resist a few kits but I'm really going to try not to give in. I wrote the patterns for Seacoast Sewing and Quilting in Portsmouth, NH and Biddeford, ME.

Since my husband passed away in April I've been trying to sort through things and start to downsize. I don't need this big house all to myself, and I won't be able to afford it indefinitely. The biggest problem is we're the third generation to live in the house and no one ever threw anything out. I mean it. Newspapers from 1916 are in the drawer of the secretary. There is a built in cupboard in the dining room with glass doors, and on top of Mark's grandparent's wedding china are obituaries clipped from the newspaper going back 100 years. His grandparents were married on June 28, 1916 and lived here for the rest of their days. Mark's mother never lived anywhere else. And we were married on June 28, 2000, so that tells you how important family history was to Mark. Does that give you an idea of what I am sorting through?

I have fabric and kits left over from Little Lamb Quilt Shop in Barrington, NH, that I owned from 2004 - 2011. I'm going to be listing things on eBay and I'll share links when I do. We ran a Thimbleberries Club from 2005-2011 so I have a lot of Thimbleberries fabric. In the last few years I've begun to collect batiks and the modern prints and colors available now. I remember fabric reps showing modern fabric lines to me the last couple years before we closed and I didn't like them at the time. Now I love them! Oh well, tastes change, and mine has. And some people are going to get good deals.

I'll be back tomorrow with the next block in our 101 Patchwork Patterns quilt. I still haven't found my thirties fat quarter collection so I'm continuing to make the blocks with batiks.

Mary