update ..... no pictures

We had a great MS Thanksgiving with family . . . lots of good food, football, dominoes, kids playing and for the grand finale   ..24 hour stomach virus:)   So  far (knock, knock, knock on wood) I have escaped it.  Brian got it the last night we were there.  He and I left a couple of hours after the rest  yesterday but everyone made it home safely.  On the way home we heard that my sister in law had come down with it.   Since getting home, Vail and Avery have come down with it and also two of Billy's kids --Suzannah and Charley Kate  --but they took the bug to TX.  Speaking as an observer, it has not been a pleasant experience for those who have come down with it.

Just before leaving for our trip to MS I finished smocking the first of the two dresses I'm working on.  I also put together Block 5 of my Raggedy friends quilt.  I'll post pictures soon.  I finished hand sewing the binding on my log cabin quilt while we were gone.  Hope I get to do some sewing this week.  I'm planning on it.

TOBY

February 2, 1998 – November 22, 2010

Twelve years went by too quickly.  We will miss you .  The house feels empty tonight.

another quilt top completed

I finished quilting the log cabin quilt and will post pictures soon.  Tonight I put the borders around the pumpkin panel I purchased awhile back.  Now I can move it to the  sandwich pile and then on to the  to-be-quilted stack. Here's a picture of the panel with borders . . . .

I think it will make a really cute wall hanging / lap quilt.  On to the next project.

I haven't posted much lately.  A lot is going on and the next  couple of weeks will really be busy so I'm probably not going to post until after Thanksgiving.   So, just in case have a safe holiday and I'll be back eventually.

DEMISE OF A VCR/DVD PLAYER and A QUILT

It’s amazing what a 16 month old boy ( and sometimes little girls between the ages of three and six)  like to put inside any available opening.   After having to remove a playing card or crayon  or some other small object from the DVD/VCR combo player that I have I decided to move it up to a higher shelf to keep little hands from pushing buttons and trying to put strange objects that were not tapes or dvd’s in the openings.  Before unplugging it I wanted to be sure there wasn’t a tape or dvd in it.  There wasn’t but I did find the following:

1 toy thermometer
3 playing cards
1 top to a small metal container
approx. 5 sunchips
All were surgically removed with some tweezers that came with my sewing machine.
I am happy to say that no small children were electrocuted during the forcing of said objects into the machine.
I am sorry to report that  the machine did not survive this last incursion of foreign objects and will be replaced soon – and kept on said  higher shelf and away from “all” hands under the age of 10 :))

I've been working on lots of little projects lately trying to whittle down my started but not finished pile of stuff.  I've made lots of progress and one of those things is a lap size log cabin quilt that I pieced and basted probably almost a year ago and have finally started quilting.  I wanted to do something besides quilt in the ditch but still don't feel all that confident about free motion and didn't really have an idea in mind for a free motion design for this quilt.  I had seen a picture of a log cabin where the sewer appeared to have used a "rounded" zig-zag stitch and just went around the inside of every strip on her quilt.  I really liked it and since my quilt is relatively small I decided to see if I could replicate it.  I'm using the #4 stitch on my 820 and after playing around with it, made some length and width adjustments and came up with something I really like. I don't have the original picture but I think mine looks pretty much like it. 

I hope to finish the quilting this weekend (unless I run out of thread) and will sew on the binding but keep the handwork for the week that I babysit while Daughter and SIL are off to Hawaii to celebrate their tenth anniversary for a week.  I'm saving up some hand sewing for that week because I know I won't be in my sewing room much if any.