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.