Invisible Quilting

I've started my last round of quilting on the quilt.  Woot!

I wrapped up the stitching with the white thread.  Finished the last crosses on Wednesday and fixed any partial seams.  I hope I caught them all!  I'll have to give it another close inspection.

I cleaned out a ton of lint from the bobbin assembly, reset the tension, swapped out thread and tested a few sections.  Can you even see it?

I Like Thursday: Chicks, Chocolate and Quilting

Ooh, wow - I spent an amazing week on Cape Cod with my chicks!  A few of the group couldn't attend, but those of us that could make it had terrific weather and good times all week.  

Every day was an adventure:  day-trips to Chatham, Wellfleet and Truro.  Long walks on the beach.  We enjoyed the sunset every evening and even roused ourselves out of bed one morning to see the sunrise.  Even that was an unexpected adventure:  5:45am and traffic was backed up on Bracket Road between the high school and Nauset Light beach.  From our vantage point two cars behind a cop car (with flashing lights) we could make out people walking down the street in the morning gloom.  So I hopped out of the car, jogged up past the cops, joined the end of the procession and asked them what they were doing.  Turns out we caught Senior Sunrise - an annual tradition of the seniors in the beginning of the school year to walk from the school to the beach for the sunrise.  Interesting tradition!  

I Like Thursday: Family Throwbacks

Another I Like post full of throwbacks.  I hope you don't mind. 

My mother, sister and I continue to sort through boxes of slides this summer in the hopes of keeping the best ones and making digital copies (and documenting when/where/who).  It's been a fun trip down memory lane, with a bunch of OMG-remember-this? plus a few who-the-heck-are-these-people?

It's so great to see Dad beaming.  I remember him as a happy guy.  I have so many cousins from both sides of the family - it's fun to see them so young.  And me with that afro?  I cried when I got that perm because it was so tight - but it makes me laugh, now.

Plugging Along

I managed to squeeze in quite a bit of quilting in a week.  I'm between 60-75% done with the white thread (then I'll swap over to grey for the last bit).  I'm currently working around the edge (having started in the center).  Always exciting to get to that point, since the edges are easier to maneuver under the sewing machine.

Little green fabric pinned to the quilt indicate sections I need to fix - either where I ran out of bobbin thread, or where there was wonky stitching that needs to be ripped out and replaced.  Well, then there were two spots where I let the backing or batting fold back under the quilt and stitched it to itself.  Drat.  For the most part the quilting has gone smoothly.  Maybe a dozen fixes so far?  Not bad.

I Like Thursday: Into September

Ahh.... late summer/early fall.  I love the sounds of the buzzy-bugs and watching the antics of the swarming hummingbirds.  My garden is rocking with the summer blooms, and if the @#$%^ groundhog didn't eat all my produce, I'd be enjoying my vegetable garden.  Nobody seems to like cucumbers, so I was fairly successful with those.  I'm making notes for next year.

I kind of went overboard planting the marigolds this year.  On the other hand, most of them were hearty enough to survive the drought and the voles (unlike the zinnias which all perished due to groundhog or lack of rain).  The cosmos also kind of went a little wild.  The bees and hummingbirds have been loving all the blooms, and I discovered that the goldfinches like cosmos seeds.  The garden has been a very active place!  Oh, and the hyssop I planted last year is finally starting to bloom (I had just about given up seeing any flowers on them).

On to Stage Two

When I last wrote, I was so excited:  I had just hit stride quilting the stars on this quilt.  Thread tension seemed to be behaving; I had a plan of attack.  I was seriously looking forward to a weekend of quilting.  Well, a weekend of quilting happened... only much later than I intended.  A tick bite laid me out for nearly two whole weeks.  I'm still not fully recovered - but enough to start quilting.

I wrapped all 56 stars early this week.  Yay!  I have a few spots I need to restitch (skipped stitches over heavy seams and empty bobbins at inconvenient times), but the rest of it went smoothly.

I usually bury them while watching TV in the evenings, so I don't really pay attention to how much time this takes.  However, I've been timing everything on this quilt.  So far I've spent as much time pinning and burying threads than I have actually quilting!  I'm shocked.