Monday again

First some randomness.

Could this be the reason Otis has been diagnosed with 

hip dysplasia? 

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I was making a new name tag for the first quilt guild meeting of the year last night.  Meghan came down with a cup of tea. 

She started to mess with my dry erase board and I said, not seeing what she was doing, "don't leave anything on there-those markers are hard to erase after awhile."

Later when I was done, she had already gone back upstairs; 

this is what I found.

(I added the "grrrrr" at the top)

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I had lunch with a dear friend last week and as I was getting ready to meet her I had this thought pop into my head that I needed to give her a quilt.

She loved it.  I'm so glad.  

We're been friends since the 4th grade.

I was the new girl in the class.  

My family moved into our newly built house before the carpet was installed and other 'finishes' so us kids could start in the new school district.  

I was terribly shy.  Susan and I somehow, I can't remember exactly, started talking about horses.  We are both horse crazy. Susan still rides, takes event lessons and horse riding vacations with some of her riding friends --Spain, Ireland; how cool is that.

Anyway, with any luck we'll still be getting together for lunch for another 40 years. 

 The quilt gift was overdue.

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Here is the customer quilt I gave a peek at a post of two ago.

Concentric circles looks really good on this quilt.

This lady brings me a top and always already knows the thread colors she wants and the quilting design! 

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I made this quilt in just a few days.  It's from Mary.  I made mine a little wider (had to piece the strips) but it's for a baby who's already 5 months old so I wanted it a bit bigger.

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the beginnings or a baby quilt for MY SOON TO BE GRANDDAUGHTER!

I am a wee bit excited.

I am doing the blanket stitching now.  I really need to take my machine in for servicing afterwards, the stitch length is messed up. It has been but I've been just adjusting and adjusting.  It's going to bite me in the butt one of these days and soon I'm afraid.  

The thoughts of getting the older machine out and set up, oiled and refresh myself with it keeps me procrastinating.  Why oh why?

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And the Gees Bend style quilt I spoke of last week.

I will be swapping it for another top that needs quilted.  

It's so nice to quilt it and pass it along for someone else to bind.

Saturday I went to the monthly meeting of the "Mod Squad". It's a spin off group from my guild.  

It was started last March.  

They've met during the summer but I had to take time off from meeting since there were too many other things going on.

I volunteered to demo the Quick Curve Ruler at our next meeting in October.

Yikes!

Is anyone else amazed that the first week of September is gone??

I did finally get my CW Desden top together.

But I forgot to take a 'flimsy' picture before folding it up.  I do have the above picture, which was for a blog post that never happened.  

The rouge light blue block up on the wall is a string pieced anvil block from Bumble Beans I just happened on her post and thought I would try one. I wish I would have used a lighter background or darker...ohhh must stop thinking like this--it's how new projects happen.

I'm quilting a donation quilt right now.  It's for a new shelter that is scheduled to open in Nov.  

The shelter will have 50 beds and they want a quilt for each bed.  I believe they have enough pieced but are getting down to the wire on the quilting and binding.

Some have been pieced in the Gees Bend style, which is the one I have to work on so I'm quilting modern designs in the large areas-- will take and post a picture soon. 

as they say 

"I owe, I owe...it's off to work I go..."

happy Friday

I am super happy to show that my two stitcheries are finished. Stitchin Annie now hangs in my sewing room.  The pillow doesn't know where it's going to live yet.

They were on my 2013 Goals list--not anymore.  yea!

X's is together.

It is 72 x 96 right now.  I may call it done but I have a HUGE bag of strip scraps and think a scrappy string border would be good.  I would want to put a narrow blue stop border on first and not sure if I have enough blue to do it. I'm at a point here with projects (?) that the thoughts of buying more fabric just to make it bigger seems wrong, weird...a waste...I don't know.

Maybe I just need another cup of coffee!

Another fun quilt by Libby that I quilted up for her. 

The dinosaur print she used for the backing is soo adorable!

The start of another customer quilt-concentric circles ala Angela Walters.

I just l.o.v.e the texture this pattern makes.  It's a big quilt 89x89 so I'll be 'circling it' for a few days.

And here is the start (OMGOSH what am I doing) shame on me 

of MetroHoops.

I used a partially used Jellyroll and some 2.5" strips from the stash.  I'm laying these out right now with four matching 'hoops' in each block, but I know a few blocks are going to be a mishmash so I hope I can control myself and NOT start to sew the blocks together until I have them all made.

Don't these look a bit labor intensive???  

They are so stinkin' quick it just amazes me every time I make one. 

Since one of my favorite things is watching a quilt 'grow' on the design wall, it's going to be hard for me to not keep making these hoops instead of finishing up other projects first...

Curve it Up Sampler quilt

 It's finally quilted.  I do have the binding sewn on but it's not hand sewn to the back yet.

The front

The back  

I pieced the back from leftover blocks, fat quarters and yardage.  I shouldn't have used the yellow though, as I had to go buy more for the binding.   :)

10 of the blocks

I'm super happy with how this turned out.

Finishes and getting close to finished....

I  finally put a clothes line up along the fence for taking pictures of smaller quilts (been wanting to do that for a long time). 

Here's the first picture using it.

and the back.

Aster Manor it done too even the binding.  

I've had some days off in a row and have been keeping my nose to the grindstone!

When I needed a break from quilting, I blanket-stitched the last 6 Dresden plate to their background.  

This is it-seriously-no matter what I am not making anymore of these dang blocks.

Remember these?  They're from March/April.  I started them on a whim.  I really wish I wouldn't do that.

I pieced another 3  X blocks.  After I sew them on the layout will be 3 x4 and approximately 72 x 96. No idea what I will do with this one-perhaps take it to 'Camp diamond in the rough'.  

Which isn't quite so rough anymore--Paul and I've stayed over twice this month, but that's another post for another day.

I hoped the X's would use up a lot of strip scraps; alas, they did not.

I have a couple customer quilts to do and then I'm hoping to get 2-3 more of my own quilts quilted in September.

Aster Manor is quilted (bad weather and bad timing) so no finished photos yet...this week...

After taking it off HQ I made the binding and sewed it and the label on! whew!  

I even have about 24 inches of the binding hand sewn to the back.  

The label says "finished August 2013" so I better get busy. :)

A couple weeks ago I had been looking over my 2013 goals--it's starting to look like I won't get everything done again. 

One of the things was to finish the two embroidery pieces I have.

They've been sitting on top of my bookcase next to HQ all year, well at least since maybe March (?)

They caught my eye and before I had time to overthink anything I loaded them and got them quilted.

Now they're pinned to the 2nd design wall.  

Wonder how long they'll stay there!

I'm finishing up an adorable quilt for Libby and then my signature quilt goes on HQ.

I really like how it turned out. I'm going to quilt all over feathers on it.

The pattern is Basic Math by Debbie Grifka. 

The layer cake I used is from French General, but I can't remember the line right now.

Medallion Flimsy

I really like this pattern.  I went way out of my comfort colors

(that would be blue)

on this one.  

Oh and in my last post I said I needed 'a couple hundred' hst for the Up, up and Away quilt

...silly me it's 589. 

 I have 85 made now.

But Kathy made hers in what seemed like no time so I'm not worried.

 :)