waffles, quilting started on baby quilts

It was a red letter day for my honey on Sunday (12/29) as I made waffles for the first time in MONTHS!!!  

I actually made the yeast dough Saturday night

and Michael tried cooking bacon in the oven....not sure that was a win

yum!!

yum!!

He was moaning as he ate, and pronounced everything excellent!  He cleaned up the kitchen after breakfast, allowing me to head to my computer and finally get my blog out.  After that, I dropped back to quilting.  

I have those 4 manatee print tops for baby quilts, so I loaded up over 5 yards of backing fabric and started quilting them:  

see the fish in the design???  I thought it was perfect

These quilts (and the 3 QoV I just finished quilting) will be part of my 2020 production….as that’s when they will be totally completed.  So, it’s a good time to sum up some of what I accomplished this year.  It’s easy to base my quilting stuff on what I did on the longarm….of course I still have over a dozen tops that I completed this year….but I don’t keep track of them until they are quilted and bound.  Anyway, I completed 62 quilts on my longarm (12 on Miss Scarlett, and 50 on my new machine)…..I think that is a respectable number considering that I didn’t have a longarm at all for 6 – 7 weeks…..and Michael and I spent 3 weeks in Tahiti, chasing a total eclipse of the sun  :~).  

Of those 62 quilts, 8 were for BEDS=DREAMS, 24 were customer quilts, 1 was completed (the first quilt sandwich on my new longarm), then cut up and serged on the edges and those were donated to the shelter for dog/cat beds, 4 were gifts to others, 10 were Quilts of Valor, 3 were quilts Michael and I kept (a pool table cover…..the second quilt I did on my new machine…..a quilt for our bed….and the recently quilted tree skirt  :~), and 12 were ones I quilted for donation to various other charities.  So, other than the customer quilts….I also made the tops for those completed quilts.  I’m pleased with what I got done….but you know me….always have grandiose plans to do even more in 2020!  

I got the first baby quilt completed, and loaded up the second.  I decided I loved the quilting pattern, but wanted to make it denser on the second quilt:  

I spent all day doing that, as well as cutting and piecing for one strata: 

for a new QoV pattern I want to try out.  

Michael had the last of the ham/gruyere cheese roll-ups for dinner and said they were just as good as right out of the oven! 

And no surprise to me, Trump policies on tariffs don’t work:   President 

Donald Trump’s strategy to use import tariffs to protect and boost U.S. manufacturers backfired and led to job losses and higher prices, according to a Federal Reserve study released  this week.  

“We find that the 2018 tariffs are associated with relative reductions in 

manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices,” concluded Fed 

economists Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce, in an academic paper.  While the tariffs did 

reduce competition for some industries in the domestic U.S. market, this was more than 

offset by the effects of rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs, the study found.   “While 

the longer-term effects of the tariffs may differ from those that we estimate here, the 

results indicate that the tariffs, thus far, have not led to increased activity in the U.S. 

manufacturing sector,” the study said.  Tit-for-tat trade retaliation is an idea best relegated 

to the past, given the presence of globally interconnected supply chains, the Fed 

researchers found.