Finished and Delivered

This is one and maybe the only finish I have had in my absence. It was a quilt for my boss's retirement. It's signed by the staff of the PACU. She was very touched and cried. I wasn't able to attend the party when it was presented to her, but I keep hearing raves...so I'm happy.

I tried some new things on this quilt and I'm still working on my freemotion quilting so I am critical of it. I'm always over critical of what I do. Also I was running short of time and didn't hand stitch the binding...I fused it and machine stitched it in the ditch from the front. Also fused the hanging sleeve rather than handstitch it. Those shortcuts make me feel like I cheated and I hope they will be ok in the long run as I have not done that before. But I had this roll of steam a seam 2 and rather than stay up all night and hope I finished the hand sewing, I fused!

It really is pretty nice afterall, so I'm going to try and remember that rather than where the oops are. And I feel better now after confessing (those Catholic roots go deep! lol)

This is a picture that a co-worker drew of the hospital entrance. I traced it onto fabric then highlighted it with outline stitching and colored it with crayons. I did the same with the lettering. I made the font on my computer and traced it then outlined stitched and colored. I am happy with the picture and I think it really makes the quilt. I had some little oops in the quilting of the center...got myself cornered, but....

I quilted it with an overall leaf and swirl design with varigated Rainbow thread. It went pretty quick and isn't a big feature. Wish I had taken a picture of the backing fabric. It was a big hit. It was a large scale print with Japanese ladies on it. Our boss is Japanese...of course.

Catching Up

Whew! It's been along time since I posted! I'm not sure why I got out of it...I think it was that I was reading so many other blogs and online groups that when I was done I was out of time or exhausted and just couldn't blog. I've been working on curbing my computer time so I'm going to try the blog thing again. I like it as a way of keeping track of my quilting.

I'm joining the Halloween quilt retreat hosted by Susan and will attempt to post my progress here.

The other issue is that I haven't really been sewing much. I've been working on rearranging my quilting spaces. I started it during the summer and would have thought I would have it all done by now, but I've run into some issues that have slowed me down. First one was that my helper, my nephew Travis, broke his arm pitching. Now he's off to college. Hard to move stuff myself...The second issue is that I discovered that the cat was peeing in the room I was moving my quilting frame to...guess she was trying to tell me that she had cystitus again...So the move into that space is stalled. I've gotten the smell out, but when I use the black light I still see lots of areas that glow. I'm going to treat it again today, this time I'm going to use a carpet shampooer with pet shampoo and X/O added. I've used Nature's Miracle on it 2 or 3 times now without success...any ideas?

This is what my sewing room looks like this morning. This is the view to the right entering the room.

And this is the view looking to the left.

It's rather overwhelming to me when I walk in there. Alot of stuff has already been relocated to the garage. I'm going to try and get the rest of the stuff packed up today after I get back from my doctor appointment and errands. Most of the cabinets are emptied and I will have to figure how to get them moved so I can paint the walls. I figure I can at least move them into the center of the room when I get the stuff out. I'm aiming for putting down the new floor over the Thanksgiving weekend when Travis is home from college to help me. We'll see....