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It's Spring Cleaning time. The sewing machine has gone off to Ann's Fabrics Sewing Machine Center for it's annual spa treatment. Andy, the long-time repairman there and now the owner of the shop, recommends annual cleaning and tune-ups for sewing machines. Considering how much I sew and how much lint I clean out of my machine after finishing quilting a project, I know it's important. All that fuzz really gums up the works.

A clean machine is a happy machine!

All the machine work on the "Snow Melt" quilt is done. I still have several hours of work burying threads. I'm considering entering it in this Spring's Blogger's Quilt Festival which runs from May 15-29, 2015. Amy Ellis holds this on-line quilt show twice a year, during Quilt Market. She started it in 2009 as a special event for folks not involved in the trade show!

Anyone can enter up to 2 quilts but you do need to be a blogger. You must write a new post about your quilt(s) during the week of the festival to link up. All types of quilts are eligible--there are 11 categories from Art Quilt to Scrappy. Information about entering is available at the link above. I just found out this about this semi-annual show reading the issue 4 of the magazine MakeModern.

The show is just a month away. If I decide to enter "Snow Melt" that's when I'll post photos the finished quilt!

Now. Spring cleaning. I have a small collection of fabrics from recently finished quilts which needs to go back into the stash. The sewing room could use a good tidy-up too!

I'll share some non-quilting projects next week.

The 2nd issue of Make Modern Magazine was released on November 1. This digital modern quilt magazine continues to delight.

One of the articles is about men who quilt. They interviewed 6 men and included photos of 2-3 quilts made by each of them. 3 of them said their grandmothers had taught them to quilt and was taught by an uncle and a couple other family members when he came home from a deployment in Iraq! Several had been quilting since they were kids. One tells a story about going home to visit his grandmother. She decided his 5 days with her was long enough to make a quilt (his first)! And they did! One of these men, Molli Sparkles, created a quilting bee just for guys--"No Girls Allowed Quilt Bee". Instagram #NGAQB. That made me laugh! He started a Facebook page too--"Men Who Quilt." My take home message from these stories: pass on your quilting skills to the children in your life, boys as well as girls!

The magazine also has a collection of photos of quilts from the 2014 Radiant Orchid Challenge. For those of you who love purple and magenta, this digital quilt show is definitely worth the price of the magazine. And once you seen all of them there is a pattern for a purple quilt so you can make one for yourself!

The other thing I really love about this digital magazine: There are only a couple of pages of advertising at the very end. Most of the print quilt magazines have so much ad space that it feels like the articles are more an afterthought.

I encourage you to check out Make Modern. It's a great quilting magazine.

For the record: I don't have any connection or investment in Make Modern--except for being a happy subscriber!