Finished! Plus one!

I finished the Tonga Batik quilt top. Yeah! It's about 92 x 106, so my full-sized guest bed is swamped by it. Please remember that I'm not a professional blogger, so my pictures are not professional quality.

I'm not sure about my choice of inner borders, but they're done now, so they're staying.

 Waaaay too large for my double bed.

This quilt has been sitting in my to-do pile for a year-and-a-half. I finally put on the wide blue border to finish it. It's a black and blue quilt using exchange squares from my friends at the Eureka Springs, AR, guild retreat. I love the way it turned out. When I solve the problems with importing my photos, I'll upload more of this blue quilt.

'Til then...

Debbi



Nearly there...

Two more sides to sew on the final border of my Tonga Batik quilt. I've just started spring break, so I should be able to finish not only that quilt top, but maybe even one or two UFOs this week as well. I'll try to get some photos posted tomorrow when I get the Tonga done. 'Til then...
Debbi

Goodbye, Barbara Engler.

Last night Northwest Arkansas lost a fabulous quilter and a treasured member of several quilt guilds, including two that I belong to - Q.U.I.L.T. and Dogwood. Barbara Engler was a friend to my mother for many years before I started quilting. When I joined the guild, she welcomed and encouraged me and became my friend as well. Barbara was well known for her exquisite applique and wonderful color sense. I loved going shopping with Barbara as she was as interested in everyone else's fabrics and pattern plans as she was her own. She was a lady, a mentor, and a friend, and she will be sorely missed. Goodbye, Barbara.

Finally, progress on my Tonga Batik quilt again...

Callie (left) - the reason I STILL don't have all four sides of my binding sewn onto this quilt yet. She races me to the sewing room so that she can claim the quilt first. And Maxie (right) - helping Callie anchor the quilt just in case I try any funny stuff.

The left photo (sorry for the shadow) shows the mirror image checkerboard sections of the second border. The right photo shows the checkerboard sewn onto the ends of the border.

Three shots of one side of the second border sewn on. That was as far as I got before Sinnie took over the ironing board. I really like the way this is looking so far. Tonight (if I can reclaim both my sewing machine and my ironing board from the cats) I'm going to make the last two sides of the border and add the cornerstones.

Okay, so now you get to suffer from an overexposure to Sinbad photos. He was having a ball taking over my ironing board last night. He posed shamelessly for the camera.

That paw was poised to spring claws at a moment's notice if I attempted to remove him from his perch. Grrrrr!!! (He's such a faker.)

Trying out his cute look since I didn't buy the threatening one...
(You can see from his naked belly and bare legs that he's still overgrooming from allergies).

Another ferocious, look-at-all-my-teeth look. Grrrr...really, I mean it this time!!!

Believe it or not, he rolled onto his back and just rocked back and forth for a while, waving his back legs in the air. Just having a little fun, I guess. Silly cat.

If I can win the battle of the sewing room tonight, I will get some more photos of the finished second border and the beginning of the third. I already have part of the third border finished; it's more checkerboard. The fourth border is a final, wide, straight-cut border. I can see the end in sight...!

The cats are plotting against me.

My cats are plotting against me. I tried once more last night to sew on the binding for my hearts quilt. I HAVE to get something finished soon! I got two more sides sewn before I had too many cats on the quilt to be able to move it. Thanks Tessie and Maxie. So I moved on to my Tonga Batik quilt. I'm still working on the checkerboard borders. I was actually going great guns until Sinbad decided that I needed to stop. One very long cat stretched out on my ironing board pretty much put a stop to any ironing. Fine. There was a PBS fundraiser on TV the other night, and I had recorded Celtic Thunder so that I could speed through the fundraising portions. Since I couldn't sew, I kicked back to enjoy some music and a show. I hope I didn't actually want to WATCH the TV... From this camera angle, you can't tell, but from my seated position on the couch, I saw more cat ears than I did singer. It's a good thing that the cat and the singer are equally handsome. Sinbad seemed to enjoy the show anyway.

I have seen this cat behavior before. It was 8:30, well past kitties' bedtimes apparently. Four against one is a little hard to beat, so I gave up and went to bed. Amazingly enough, not a single cat came with me. They remained in the sewing room making sure I didn't try to sneak back in.

I intend to get off work earlier this evening and head straight home and to the sewing room. If I'm lucky, I can get the final side of binding sewn onto my heart quilt before they can stop me. Wish me luck!

Allergies!

Oh dear. Beautiful weather, blooming trees...sore throat... Allergy time. I guess it's time to hit the Bee Pollen when I get home. Does anyone have a better allergy remedy? Claritin didn't help. Bee Pollen often does if I take it early enough. I hope I don't get too ill. Now that I'm home and have access to my sewing room, I'd hate to not feel up to actually sewing. Pooh!

Kansas City, cont.

I haven't much to report since I've been holed up in a hotel room for two days. There aren't even any shops nearby. So why don't I drive somewhere? Have you seen the Kansas City traffic? I'm a coward.

Anyway, I've finished five of the last nine butterfly quilt motifs I had left. I may just get finished before I leave after all. So far I've watched Finding Neverland, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and (currently) Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown. Did I mention there's not a great selection of shows on TV here? I have spent quite a bit of time blog browsing though. I don't usually have time, so I've really enjoyed learning so much about other quilters out there. Thanks to everyone for sharing their quilting adventures so generously.

Oh, I just found some pictures to share with you. I'm working on my husband's computer, and we used this computer at our 2009 Q.U.I.L.T. guild quilt show. We showed an overhead PowerPoint show of our small quilts for our Small Quilt Auction.

These two photos (above and below) are the front and back of the same quilt. My good friend Debbie found the cream background material with the colorful swirls in it. She knows that I don't often use neutrals, so she challenged me to buy the fabric and make something with it using fabrics from my stash. I found so many fabrics, that I couldn't decide which ones to use, so I made three small quilts (the one with the turquoise setting is pictured farther down and is still on my To Do List to finish). Since I couldn't decide which setting I liked better for my small quilt donation, the purple or the green, I made them into one wallhanging. I matched up the front and the back as exactly as I could and used a long, zig-zag style stitch to stitch-in-the-ditch. This made sure that both sides were quilted identically without worrying about getting out of the ditch on one side. I used the same zig-zaggy stitch in the border triangles.

I didn't know how to hang a double-sided quilt, so I made loops at the top for a hanger. I liked this quilt so much that I tried to buy it back at the quilt show. One of the vendors at the show outbid me. Shoot. Oh well, I felt very flattered that a vendor wanted my quilt. Thanks for the ego boost, Just Jennifer.

This little table runner is the third setting I chose for the same blocks. It's currently on my To Do list to finish this year. I may wind up donating it to next year's auction.

This was Mom's donation to the auction. Mom is a great quilter and has a fantastic design sense. She made the center dragonflies for a class that she taught in the peelback technique, then designed the rest of the quilt around it. (I donated the butterflies from one of my fabrics.)

We were encouraged to donate two quilts each to the auction, so I donated this Winnie the Pooh baby quilt. Just after I donated the quilt, my officemate announced that she was pregnant, so once again I tried to buy back one of my own quilts. Once again, I failed. Once again, I choose to be flattered.

Back to my butterflies... Don't be a stranger!

Debbi