Hi ,

Our first real heat wave of the season has finally arrived here in western North Carolina. I don't miss the constant rain, but keeping our small vegetable garden happy is going to take a little more effort now.

And speaking of summer, Josh has shared a great recipe for tortilla chips, which are made for dipping into fresh pico de gallo from the garden!

Fresh, authentic Mexican food is some of our favorite food to cook. We've been making homemade Mexican dishes for years now, and we were so pleased to discover a brand new Craftsy class on preparing a host of garden fresh salsas as well as street tacos.

If you've ever had an interest in home cooking real Mexican food, you have to check out this class. The best part is you learn how to make your own tortillas, and it's nowhere near as difficult or tedious as we once thought.

If you'd like to jump into making Mexican street food too, sign up for this class today. Click Here to get 25% off the regular class price.

It's the first week of a new month which means it's time to piece a new block!

These curved seams might look intimidating, but they're actually super easy because they're NOT pieced. Definitely check out this week's video to see how this block comes together with a little marking and just 2 lines of stitching.

Click here to learn how to piece a cheater's Drunkard's Path.

I'm calling this a Cheater Drunkard's Path because we're cheating on the piecing by layering, top stitching, and clipping the fabrics to create this design.

Technically this is a raw edge applique technique and it's not only super fast, it's also super easy. And super fun!

Looking for the template to make this block? Find it here in the Building Blocks Quilt Pattern.

I first embarked on the completely ridiculous, absolutely insane idea to hand bind all the little squares from the Free Motion Quilting Project together back in 2012. Carefully hand binding the individual strips of blocks wasn't bad and it was a nice project to have for traveling. It was when the strips needed to be connected together that this beast really became a monster.

What's hilarious is I've been dragging this quilt around with me - to a Craftsy shoot in Denver, to classes in Greensboro, and all the while insisting that it's unfinished because it needed extra borders around the edges.

But the truth is, it's been finished all this time. Clearly it's finished since I already had a photo shoot with it!

So today I'm making it official!

No more borders! I'm killing that idea stone dead and will salt the ground where I buried it. No more borders means I can finish this quilt TODAY, right now with one super long slog of hand binding.

Sometimes we can make quilts far more complicated than they need to be, and it just results in getting stuck and frustrated with the project. Make a stand for simplicity and stop agonizing about the details that won't fit. I've certainly found this to be a huge relief!

So that's it for this week! Please enjoy the recipes, articles, and videos and don't miss out on the excellent Mexican Street Food Craftsy class too.

Let's go quilt,

Leah Day