Elsie, Cookie, newest quilted designs

When I got up Saturday morning (9/6), one of my ‘kids’ was sprawled in the living room

 

and the other was snug in her bed in the kitchen. 

 

 

Michael had already left for golf here at SCCL (eventually coming home…almost happy at last….with an 81!!)  After breakfast, I spent the rest of the morning ironing and loading a new back onto Miss Scarlett.  As an aside, when I was going through all of the problems with the (as yet unnamed) Miss Scarlett, I know several people said to me ‘if you ever get it working, I would love to come over and see how it works’.  Of course that is always ok with me, but I have no idea who you are at this point :~).  So…if you are one of the people who wants to see something, please let me know.  And if it is a specific thing (like how to load the back…how to place the batting…watching it stitch out)…let me know that too.  Now that Miss Scarlet is apparently on track (yes, I’m still keeping my fingers crossed…I am not convinced everything is all sunshine and rainbows yet)…I’ll make a list and call you when I am doing whatever it is you want to see….as long as you understand that I AM NO EXPERT….I am still learning as I go along.

!!!!!!!  June is a definite for retreat…and she is excited….so am I!!!!!!!

Miss Scarlett was loaded up by 1 PM and I started stitching.  I really wanted to do a computer edge to edge, because I didn’t do that 100% correctly on the last quilt, but this quilt was crying out for a block to block design, so even though that requires a lot more hands on time, that’s what I did.  I did alternate my quilting block designs…one on the pieced block

 

 

and a different one on the solid block…



if you double click on this, the picture might get bigger and
you can see it is a circle feather design....bigger feathers
around the outside and then smaller on the inside

so that was something new.  Jean came over for a short visit to see how the machine worked…we’re both fascinated by it.  My thread broke several times, and I used 5 bobbins, so that gave me a chance to practice getting back to the correct spot to complete my stitched out pattern after that happens.  Joanne came over in the late afternoon to scope it out.  I stopped stitching at 5:30 (basically because my feet, knees and legs were SCREAMING) and my wonderful honey did champagne and puffy things for dinner  :~).  We just had egg rolls, but they were awesome!  At 7 PM I headed back to the studio to work on the quilt a bit more…and by 8:30 the stitching was done….YAY!  I stumbled upstairs and got a great foot and leg rub from my honey while we watched an extraordinary TV show called EARTHFLIGHT:A Nature Presentation for North America.  It was a bird’s eye view of the area with fascinating things happening at every stop on a bird’s migratory flight.  Did you know that in one area dolphins ‘herd’ the fish up onto a muddy bank to be able to eat them?  I think there is one more in the series called EARTHFLIGHT for Africa, and we’re really looking forward to seeing that as well.

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Michael took Cookie for a walk early Sunday morning, while I put together pancakes for breakfast.  After breakfast I headed to the studio and worked on my tumbling blocks.  My goal is still to have all 4 sizes of tumbling blocks cut and sewn before I leave on retreat.  That way, Michael can have that time to start laying out the potential quilt.  I’m not sure I’m going to make it (given everything else I want to get done) but I’m going to give it the old retirement try!  We took a break in the afternoon for an ice cream trip to BREWSTERS…YUM…otherwise it was slaving away over the hot sewing machine while watching WHEN HARRY MET SALLY and parts of the US OPEN until 8 PM when I finally staggered upstairs to collapse!