Bottom of the Basket

I attacked the rest of the quilt basting this morning, but... oops - ran out out my little brass safely pins. I keep them in a little basket I made from pine needles several years ago. (The pine needles made me sneeze through the process, so I never made another.)

Can you see what was at the bottom of the basket? I little gold heart charm. I have no idea where it came from, but it was a little bit of happy to start the day!

I ran out to Hobby Lobby and restocked my safety pins but never got back to basting - tomorrow I will DEFINITELY finish basting this quilt.

Here's my new little NEON friend.  He was hanging out on the patio today and was smart enough to keep away from the doggies.

I still haven't received my books. Maybe tomorrow????  :)

Sunday Afternoon Quilting

After church and lunch, I quilted around polka dots - fun, FUN!

And here's the backside! I'm almost done basting the second quilt top - I'll for sure finish that tomorrow.
And after all that quilty goodness I gave myself a little mani-pedi out on the patio:

I'm good to go for the week!

Now at long last (and with LOTS of help from Daughter 2 - thanks Emily!) I'm sharing a slideshow of the photos I took on the recent garden tour at Lake Martin.  I think you'll enjoy it - I've never seen anything like this garden!

Hexie Book at Paducah!

LOOKY! Thanks to Jill for sending Peggy and me this picture of our NEW BOOK on the shelf at the AQS booth at the Paducah show! It's killing me that I don't have a copy yet, but maybe my shipment will come today.

Yesterday I made a stash busting quilt back.  I pulled various blues and browns and kept sewing until it was big enough.

And then the basting began! This is quilt is ready to go under the machine - yay! Today I'll be piecing another backing and basting another quilt. This next week will be all about MACHINE QUILTING!

The Back of the Quilt

Here's a shot of the back of the quilt that I'm hand quilting. There are some sections of flower fabric in the border and I'm simply outlining them with the quilting.  One side done.  Three more to go!

I did finish the quilt top I've been working on - machine appliqué, all day!  Now I have two tops ready to be basted. I'll have to piece the backing for one of them - I'll work on that today.  My mother will probably be coming to visit in a week or so and I want to get these quilts ready for hand work before she comes! I don't like to hide away in my studio when she's here - so I try to plan for only hand work while she's visiting. Lots to do before then!

And what else am I doing? Planning the next couple of quilts in my head, of course! I have one design completed (yes, still in my head!) and the other one started!  Gotta finish the ones I'm working on first, though!

One Woman Sweat Shop!

Here I am burning the midnight oil! I finally put down my hand quilting at 11:30 last night. I'm guessing I'll finish this quilt in about a week. I spent HOURS yesterday doing machine appliqué
on another quilt - HOPEFULLY I'll finish that quilt top today. (I finished another quilt top a couple of days ago!)

Yes, I work very long days (and nights) but I LOVE every minute!

We had our FIRST daylily bloom of the year yesterday - oh happy yellow day!

And here's more eye candy. Isn't this an adorable hooked rug?  My friend J made it. She has lovely hooked rugs all over her house - yes, I'm very inspired by them. I really want to make a rug when I slow down a bit...

A Sunny Morning to Quilt

I LOVE mornings like today.  The sun was streaming through the windows - lots of natural light! I had three things I wanted to accomplish this morning.

One was to make the binding for this quilt and stitch it down.  DONE!  I still have more hand quilting to do on this one before it's finished completely.

Another project was to carefully remove a pinned-together quilt top from my design wall so it can be machine appliqued.  This took some time since I'd pinned all the way through to the design wall in many places.  But I got it DONE.

Next I had to send out some e-mails.  DONE.

Love the feeling of marking everything off my list!

I spent the afternoon hand sewing with friends - lots of fun!  Tomorrow I'll be working on machine appliqué and more hand quilting.

Lots of Projects!

How many quilts do you work on at one time? Today I worked on FOUR different quilts! I'm still hand quilting the one above. I've worked my way out from the center and I'm now on the borders!  Yay!

This is part of the guild mystery quilt. I'm doing a bit at a time.

This hexie project is all pinned on my design wall, ready for machine appliqué. And I'm working on the outer sashing for another quilt. It's a juggling act around here...

We had a busy weekend! We spent Saturday on campus attending the A-Day spring football scrimmage and rolling our beloved oak trees one last time before they are cut down tomorrow.

The final roll! I've never seen so many people in one big crowd EVER - more than 83,000!  Wow!

Did you notice anything about that picture of me above??? I got my hair cut BIG TIME Friday! Very short! I still do a double take every time I walk by a mirror - who is that person? But it feels really good and is very quick to style. Gotta love a timesaver!