giveaways | Needle and Foot

In the excitement of the holiday weekend, Black Friday sales activities and other distractions, I forgot to draw the winner of the Make Wall Quilts e-book. This morning, using my scientifically random system of drawing names ( Hey Julia, what is a number between 1 and 42?), Nancy was selected as the winner of the book. Nancy, I hope you enjoy it and make some fun projects with it! Remember, if you want a copy of the book – it is a bargain on Amazon. Truly – only $2.56 for the hard copy of the book. Great gift for yourself or your quilty friends!

Now that business has been taken care of, want a peak at the quilt I am making? Sarah Goer is a talented quilter, pattern designer, and blogger. We both started our blogs at roughly the same time and became friends at that time. This is the second time I have pattern tested for her and I really enjoy it. Before having children she was a math teacher at the junior high school level. I think this gives her a great background for pattern writing. An affinity for math and puzzles gives her the skills to write a clean, well understood pattern. For now though, this is all I am going to say! Here is a look at what I am working on.

I asked for opinions on color choices on Facebook and Instagram about a week ago and got lots of feedback. This blue and yellow combo was quite popular and I am very happy with the look so far!

Finally, I was reading the news this morning and saw an article about Facebook that caught my eye. Facebook gets a bad reputation from the way fake news is often generated, hysteria builds based on ridiculous, irresponsible posting, the cyber-bullying that occurs etc. Much of this is due to poor decision making on the part of the Facebook user community as well as lack of parental monitoring of the youth that use social media. When Facebook introduced live video options last year some really disturbing videos were posted. In response to this, Facebook hired a large team (3,000+ employees) to monitor the videos for harmful content or intent. For quite a while now, they have monitored text for any disturbing conversation that may indicate children and potentially abusive adults (sexual predators) They will notify authorities when suspicious text is found.

Now Facebook has expanded their use of Artificial Intelligence to scan posts for text that indicates possible suicidal tendencies. When such information is picked up, there is a team of interventionists ready to contact the person posting as well as persons who may have responded to the posts with supportive information such as suicide hot line phone numbers and other resources which may be able to assist. Realizing that this sort of intervention has to happen quickly, Facebook has trained employees available at any hour to speak with authorities in the language of their country if something suspect is found.

Facebook is a powerful social media platform with over two billion users. Many would say Facebook noses around where they shouldn’t. That they push annoying ads targeted at users and monitor conversations to be able to do so. However, it is my belief that people using Facebook are making a decision to be posting on a highly monitored platform and thus making their lives somewhat public. I think it is a good thing to know that the company uses the tools they have to try to protect the safety of the users. I am curious to hear your thoughts on this. To me it shows a very responsible use of the incredibly powerful technology developed by Facebook.

Off to the sewing room! I want to make some good progress on the baby quilt I am making with Sarah’s pattern. Hope everyone is carving out a little creative time in their day.

Note: This post contains affiliate links meaning if a reader clicks a link on my page and makes a purchase, I will be paid a small amount. This payment does not increase the price of the sale to the customer.

Giveaways are pretty darn fun. Luck has been on my side and I have two wins to brag about. I know it isn’t nice to be boastful but what can you do? Plus I want to show my thanks to the bloggers that sponsored these giveaways.

The first win was actually in late spring which means I am a bit late in writing about this one. I entered a giveaway on Linda Smith’s blog, Scrapmaster. She and several others were writing posts to introduce their guild, the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild. I was lucky enough to win the draw for three lovely fat quarters! Thanks so much to Linda.

The dark and light grays in these prints are so pretty and they will be fun to incorporate into an as of yet unknown project.

The other prize I won was from the June giveaway for A Lovely Year of Finishes (ALYOF) which I have been faithfully linking to each month since January. (If you aren’t already familiar with it, ALYOF is a fun link up. At the beginning of each month you link one quilty goal that you have for that month. If you finish the goal, link again at the end of the month. They have a number of prizes that they draw names for each month.) When I won, Kim Lapacek, of Persimon Dreams, gave me the pattern of my choice. It wasn’t easy. She has a selection of really fun patterns that she has designed. Being a lover of dresdens (here is a post a bout the first, and so far only, dresden project) I chose her pattern titled, Dresden Neighborhood Block. This pattern is such a cute riff on a neighborhood. I plan to make a mini with it. If you want a closer look, the pattern is available here on Craftsy.

Thanks so much to these two blogger/quilters for their generosity! I do love this community of ours.

I have been squeezing in minimal time for sewing over the past few days. Instead of my sewing room, I have been in the kitchen dealing with the amazing number of peaches ripening on our tree. They are so juicy and sweet but really, we have more than we can handle.

So far, I have frozen five gallon size zip lok bags of sliced, peeled peaches for making pies over the winter.

This morning Julia and I made a batch of jam using strawberries and peaches.

We canned 8 half pint jars and will do at least one more batch. I think peach jam on its own can be a bit bland so I like to add berries to it. Last year I did raspberry peach and it was really good.

I am a bit worried that this batch isn’t going to set up properly. It doesn’t seem to be getting thick enough as it cools. True confession time – my husband is really the jam maker in the family. He does a great job and just uses fruit and sugar, cooking it down until the consistency is perfect. Me, not so much… Last year I tried his method and ended up with a product similar to Jolly Rancher hard candy. I tossed the whole batch. I just cannot get a consistently reliable result. Today I used pectin and followed a recipe (which for some reason, Ray never needs to do) and I am just not confident it worked. We shall see. If this batch turns out to be too soft, I will just have to resign as assistant jam maker and leave it to the expert.

Post Update: Yay!! The jam set up just fine. I will make a second batch now that I have seen success. 🙂

Summer is going so fast. Today Julia received an email from the high school with an assignment to read two books before school starts on August 18th. And so it begins!

Hope you are all enjoying your summers and savoring the days.

Linking to Freemotion by the River.