Christmas Gifts Done!

I finished sewing down the last binding on my sister's three Christmas quilts this past week.  I love sewing down binding, so this was an enjoyable process for me.  I used Connecting Threads Essentials thread in various colors for all of the quilting.

The finished Christmas table mat.  I used my walking foot to do the quilting around the flower in the center.  I couldn't get a good picture of the center quilting, but I'm hoping if you zoom in on the second picture that you can see it.  I really like how this quilt turned out.  I hope my sister does too! 

The Halloween Octagon.  I really like the striped binding on this one.

 And the Autumn Octagon.





Crazy for Dots & Stripes!

Those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile know that I have a thing for dots.  I have quite a collection of dot fabrics, but am always on the lookout for more.  When my sister bought me a gift certificate for Fat Quarter Shop for Christmas, I was pretty sure that I was going to use it for dot fabrics since FQS has a great selection.  I've had the GC since July and have been waiting patiently for a good sale.  That day arrived on Black Friday when FQS offered twenty percent off everything.  Perfect!  That was just what I was waiting for and I didn't hesitate to place my order LOL.  I have also gotten really interested in stripes lately after I used one for binding one of my sister's Christmas quilts, so I ordered quite a few stripe prints as well.

The GC was for $200 (purchased for only $160 during the special sale in July), which qualified my order for free shipping.  When all was said and done, I owed $25.  Not bad at all, especially when you see how much I got, which I bet is what you are waiting for.  So without further adieu, here is my loot from the FQS.  Of course it was beautifully packaged.  I didn't take the fabrics out of the individual bags yet because they are easier to store as they are right now.  You'll have to trust me that the bags with stripes are full of great stripe fabrics.  I got 51 different cuts of fabric ranging from 1/2 yd to 1 yd each.



But that's not all.  You had to know that, didn't you?  Dawn and I hit a local quilt shop on Friday as well and I picked up a nice stripe fabric at 25% off and a couple of dot fat quarters.  That filled up my punch card, giving me $25 in store credit, so I went back the next day and between using a 40% off coupon and my credit, I picked up 5 yards of this gorgeous batik for less than $8, including almost $3 of sales tax, so basically 5 bucks.  The other fabrics are the ones I got on Friday, plus a couple of Kaffe Fasset fabrics that Dawn had added to her order for me.

And of course the cats have been up to their usual activities.  Sassy recently learned how to get to the top of the entertainment center and she somehow does it very quietly so you can't catch her before she gets up there *sigh*.  Once she's up there, she stays towards the back where she knows you can't reach her.  Here she is just an hour or so ago hanging out with her kitty friend that lives on top of the entertainment center. 



And here she is standing on her house, desperately trying to reach the curtains, which thankfully she can't or I'd probably find her hanging from them. 



Echo has also spent time on the house since I moved it in front of this window.



Tyrone helped me changed the furnace filter this week by testing the ladder for me before I used it.  He is quite adept at climbing ladders.

Echo was helpful too...he closely supervised the quilting of my sister's Christmas quilts.

And Sassy tested them for softness afterwards.

And here she is apparently using her back leg as a pillow.  She has the weirdest sleeping positions of any cat I've ever owned.







Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends in blogland!  I have many things to be thankful for this year, and the friends I've made since I started my blog last December are near the top of the list.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

Had a Productive Quilting Weekend

As I had hoped would be the case, I had a pretty productive quilting weekend.  I spent yesterday at Dawn's and first up, I basted the two table mats that I had made for my sister's Christmas gifts that I posted about here.  I also got the autumn octagon mat cut out and partially assembled.  I finished the assembly today and also got it basted, so now all three are ready for quilting.  I'm hoping to tackle that next weekend. 

Here is the basted autumn octagon (same pattern as the Halloween one) and the backing.  I didn't get a very good picture of the backing, but it's from the Gobble Gobble line by Sandy Gervais.  I love, love, love this fabric and am happy to have a decent size scrap of it left.

And the basted Halloween octagon and Christmas table mat as well as the backings.  I really love the backings on these too!













Stash Enhancement!

Ok, so after I did my previous post about not getting anything quilty done recently, I remembered that I have spent some time buying fabric over the past couple of weeks.  How could I forget that???  The first purchase was from Hancocks of Paducah.  No special reason...just had the urge to buy fabric, so I ordered some Kaffe Fassett and Philip Jacobs fabrics.  Some were back ordered, but I've received most of them. 

Shortly after I received my package from Hancocks, Jackie had a great post market sale with 25% off everything in her store.  Well, who could resist that?  Certainly not me LOL.  So I ordered a bunch of small cuts of mostly Kaffe and Jacobs fabrics, with some batiks thrown in for good measure.  Here's my haul from the last couple of weeks, minus the fabrics from Hancocks that haven't arrived yet.  Oh, and yesterday I ordered a couple of Moda Saltbox Harvest layer cakes from Fat Quarter Shop at 50% off.  I love that fabric line, so was waiting for a sale to pick some up.  Fifty percent off certainly met that criteria!

Dark Kaffe & Jacobs fabrics:



Medium Kaffe & Jacobs fabrics:

Light Kaffe & Jacobs fabrics:



And all of the batiks:





No Quilting Going on Around Here

Since my marathon quilting session the weekend before last, I've done nothing on the quilting front, nada.  Work has been busy, which is unusual for this time of year, and of course there's the divorce and move stuff for T going on.  I got the divorce decree all prepared this past weekend, so it's ready to file the first couple of days of January.  T's move day is now just 4 weeks away.  We are making good progress with the to do list and should be ready once it's time to actually pack up the truck.

I did spend time picking out paint colors for the rooms I'm going to paint and I went and got paint samples from Lowe's.  This coming weekend we are getting rid of most of the master bedroom furniture as it's old and neither of us wants it, so once that room is fairly empty I'll test out the colors I picked.  If they look ok, then that room will be the first one I paint.  Also this coming weekend, I have a quilting day at Dawn's, so I should actually have some quilty related stuff to post about soon!

Oh, on the pet front, Sassy and Echo both went for exams and their three year booster shots this week.  Both did great and were in excellent health.  I also discovered that Sassy can actually meow when she wants, and quite strongly I might add LOL.  She normally just trills and squeaks, but on the ride to the vet in her carrier, she made it quite clear that she was not happy to be confined!

For those looking for a feline fix, here is a picture of the boys sleeping on my bed this week and also a picture of Sassy where she isn't supposed to be...on top of the armoire in my room *sigh*.



Indian Summer is Quilted!

This weekend I ditched pretty much everything else that needed to be done and spent the weekend having my own personal quilting retreat.  It was fabulous!  I was raring to go on Saturday morning, so after my coffee, I got out the backing fabric for Indian Summer and got the back made.  I had already prewashed the batting the day before, so next up was layering and basting so I could get started on the quilting, which was what I really wanted to do.  I had the basting all done by late afternoon.  I took a trip to my personal thread shop and selected King Tut #933 for the top and Essentials #20882 for the back.

I quilted and quilted and quilted and by late Sunday afternoon I was done.  I thought I was done earlier than that, but decided that the quilt needed some more quilting, so back to the machine I went.  So here is Indian Summer all quilted and ready for trimming and binding:



A couple closeups of the quilting on the front:

And the back, with a closeup of the quilting there as well:

And you had to know that I probably had some help with the process over the weekend.  I had help in the sewing room and Echo also helped while I was basting the quilt.

I also learned the hard way on Saturday night that I can never, ever leave thread on the sewing machine unattended when Echo is around.  I came back to find the King Tut thread chewed in half and a piece sticking out of Echo's mouth.  When I pulled on it, about 2 feet of thread came out.  YIKES.  And please note, you are never supposed to pull things like that out in case it's already ingested and wrapped in their intestines, but I just reacted.  Thankfully he hadn't swallowed it, but I didn't know if he had eaten more thread, so he got a couple of syringes of peroxide (it makes cats vomit).  Within five minutes the peroxide worked and thankfully no more thread.  But lesson learned.  Echo has now eaten yarn and thread, and seems obsessed with both, so I will have to be extra careful so he doesn't get into something that could kill him, which both of those things can do if a cat ingests them.