Cookie & Elsie, new pillow cover, Paula's first quilt done

My honey was up early Sunday morning (10/29) hoping to play golf.  There was a tournament on the course yesterday, so they didn’t get in their normal Saturday round.  It was raining when he first got up, but quit by 9 AM, so off he went.  I’m still fighting whatever is going on in my head/throat, but I headed to my studio to continue to quilt on Paula’s log cabin anyway.  When I came upstairs to make my tea about an hour later…this adorableness was going on:

So, a decade or so ago when I made Michael his first quilt, I also made him a matching pillow.  While the quilt still looks like I made it last week, the pillow has taken quite a bit more wear and desperately needed a new covering:  

That was my project early Sunday morning while I was stitching out a few more rows on Paula’s quilt.  I went into my orphan blocks box (you know, where you put blocks leftover from making a quilt.  I seem to have a lot of those because I’m either making something up and have no idea how many blocks I will need…or I’m altering a pattern somehow and again, have no idea how many blocks I need) to see what I had and I found 2 beautiful broken arrow blocks in this truly gorgeous flannel:  

I totally remember buying this flannel in Tennessee with Ginny on one of our many fabric finding (and eating fried green tomato sandwiches) trips when I was visiting.  I bought it in red, blue and a cream/tan….it has a pattern of leaves on it and it truly looks absolutely luscious.  

Here's the blue, which I put on the back of the pillow, with a zipper for easy removal for cleaning:

At that time of fabric buying….3 yards was my minimum cut….but I remember this fabric as they were rolling it out and it looked more and more beautiful and I bought 5 yards of each.  I wish I could remember what quilt I made with it so far and where it went, but oh well….I’m sure it was beautiful because the fabric looks so rich!  Anyway, I worked on it all morning and Michael now has a beautiful, new flannel pillow cover:  

I headed upstairs at 10 AM to get Italian Wedding Soup in the crockpot and between that and eating breakfast and reading the paper for just a bit, I wasn’t back downstairs until 11:30.  I fired up Paula’s quilting again, and finally…finally got back to sewing together rows on Vortex!!!  This is an example of a quilt I would love to display at SCCL….I think it would make people crazy because it does look totally wild!  I guess my quilts look different because most of the quilts I am making, I make for kids so I try to make them very bright (some people might say LOUD!!), while the quilts Paula and I saw Saturday morning were beautiful.  I headed upstairs again at 3 PM to put together herb rolls for dinner: 

and by the time I went up for good at 5 PM, Paula’s first quilt was totally done:  

She picked the same star pattern I used on 2 of my recent quilts and I think it looks very nice:

By then, Michael was home from golf (with an 85 with one birdie) and got the table ready for Bob & Marsha who came at 6 PM.  We had a small appetizer:

before having soup and rolls for dinner.  We spent the next several hours playing SCREWED and GOLF and SEVENS and laughing our heads off  :~).  We had such a good time with them and hated to see them go…and we read for just a little bit afterwards before heading for bed.