My quilt library is stuffed after 30 years of collecting quilting books, and quilt trends have changed a great deal by the looks of my books but, there is one segment of quilt books that don’t change and that is historical.  I have remarked about this before in previous book reviews and blogs; I LOVE quilt history and seek quilt books that provide that kind of information.

Tales of First Ladies is such a book and is told through the pen of the very amiable Eleanor Burns.  Cleverly written, we are given historical information not only about several first ladies but also about the White House and significant events from colonial America.  This is all told through authentic quilt blocks and quilts from that era.

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Over the past few months, the Connecting Threads team has seen two new babies and we have one more coming any day now!  With all of these new bundles of joy entering into our lives, you can imagine my excitement when I found out a couple weeks ago that my sister-in-law is expecting twins! Yipee!! Although it's still very early, the "twin history" in the family has been to have one girl and one boy. 

In my family, it is a tradition to make all of the new babies a crib quilt as our way of welcoming them into the world.  Enter my dilemma.  Do I make one larger quilt that both babies can share, or do each of them need their own?  Eek!  I'm just beginning to start quilting again after accidentally slicing my machine's power cord in half last year (long story), and I'm sad to say my skills are a little rusty.  After much flip-flopping on the decision, I made an agreement with my mom (a much faster quilter than I) that I would make one quilt and she can make a second one.

Now comes the fun part: picking a quilt to make!

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Thank you to everyone who participated in our backing giveaway.  Using a random number generator, we have selected our winner.

Congratulations! The winner is comment #112 Ruth Spaniel.
Honestly, they are both very nice but I especially like the Cobalt Scroll as blue is my all time favorite color. I really like the Quilt With us web site.

We have emailed our lucky winner and as soon as we hear back about the mailing address, we will send out 3 yards of Cobalt Scroll backing.  

Thanks again for participating!

This contest is now closed.  Thank you so much for everyone who participated!  To find out who won, click here: WINNER

Did you know that Connecting Threads now carries coordinating backing fabric?  That's right, we recently added the option to two of our most popular collections: Symphony of Blues and Charlottesville. 

We are really excited about this new offering and are hopeful that it will make your life a little easier! The fabrics come in 104" widths and are priced at just $11.96/yard. 

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When we made the photo samples of Sue's adorable Fox Hooded Robe and Alligator Hooded Robe kits in our Wild Ones flannel we all pictured cute photos of them on my 2-3/4-year-old daughter and Teri's 2-1/2-year-old son for the catalog.

The kids are almost the exact same size and have had play-dates together in the past. Cute idea, right? Ha! What a pipe dream that turned out to be! We ended up with one photo we could use of Alice in the fox robe, no usable shots of Tyler in the alligator robe, and lots and lots of out-takes. Most of the funniest ones with parents half in the shot trying to wrangle the tots were deleted, but I thought you'd enjoy seeing some of the other out-takes of photography with toddlers.

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