This is the latest under the needle on the quilting machine. After doing the first of it I discovered that I need a lot more practice on outline and echo quilting. Well this quilt will give it to me. This top was given to Ambrosina by Rose, it was given to Rose by a friend who's mother was going into a nursing home. It is very old and made out of feed sacks. There are a couple of small stains and a couple of holes that I am being very careful to outline to stabilize them.

I am having a little trouble sewing this morning, my right hand keeps going to sleep, so because I also have a headache, I decided to just come down here and do some hand sewing that won't tax either in any way. I am making pretty good progress on the latest hexagon top, and I wanted an excuse to work on it anyway. I don't suppose I really need it, but, sometimes I have trouble doing something just because I want to. This was drummed into me from childhood, that anything that was fun was a sin, and sometimes it comes out in the oddest ways. Water under the bridge, be positive, look to thefuture not the past.

My seventh finished quilt of 2017. Love Ring a variation of Drunkard's Path, the first of the series, the 2nd to be quilted. I sort of got them out of order when they were being stored in the attic, but it doesn't really matter because the plan is to get all the unquilted tops done this year. After that I will work on one quilt start to finish, no more stored tubs of UFOs. My health permitting. Some days it's all I can do to make myself sit at the machine for a couple of hours. This may not look like it, but it is a scrap quilt. These are the leftover pieces at the beginning of the strips that Ambrosina cuts for Rose, the pieces Rose can't use. This quilt represents the leftovers from about a dozen of one of Rose's quilts, and they are not all the same color, although close.

This is the back; one of my "signature" pieced backs, as Ambrosina would say.

The next one will take longer to quilt, it is an applique quilt, hand appliqued and I want to do it justice so I will spend more time on it and do a lot more quilting, probably feathers. There is a lot of white area and the quilting will show strikingly so I will want to do my best on it, I will probably start on it tomorrow although I haven't been feeling very well this week. I did get a little done on my skirt and blouse and I am ready to do some more pressing on them which I will do tomorrow. Yesterday David had to go to Walmart and asked me if I wanted anything. I asked him if he would be too much for him to pick me up a couple of yards of black fusible interfacing. He gave me a blank look and told me that it probably would be, he was sure he wouldn't get the right stuff. I expected that; I was just kidding him anyway, I will pick some up next week. I don't think Walmart carries the black stuff anyway.

The Pinwheels were starting to get a little tedious so I fed the big ones all though the machine to get them over with. So the first seam is done, now I am alternating them with the small Pinwheels in sets of four so the pile is getting big. I don't imagine they will get done any faster but at least I don't have a bunch of tubs with piles of unsorted Pinwheels in them sitting around. Just a large pile of them on the machine and spilling over into the child's rocking chair and covering my doll Grace. That rocking chair survived the house burning down when I was four years old, and it was old then. I have always loved it, although I don't know what Ambrosina will do with it when I am gone. She has no sentimental feelings for old things and much prefers to buy hers new. Oh well.

So I am off do to a little treadling and see how many Pinwheels I can get through this afternoon.

This morning both my assistants, Waddles on the left, Happy on the right, decided to grace me with their presence. Happily I was working on the other machine at the time, so it wasn't too inconvenient. They settled in for a good long snooze and I made some progress in other sewing.

This is what I'll be working on this week. I got the skirt to the 1st pressing stage, I'll be working on that tomorrow. It took time to get the serger up and running I hadn't used it in a while and I had to rethread it with black.

I have this pile of pressing that needs to be done, I was just waiting to get some other sewing done. Since I have to set the ironing board up and put it away every time, I wanted to make it worth the effort.

So I've got my week started out pretty good. I hope to accomplish a lot, we will see how it goes.

 Pineapple, finished day before yesterday. I had a headache yesterday and didn't get a lot else done. The day I took the picture was overcast so the picture isn't very bright, I will try again on a sunny day.

 The back with it's leftover and orphan blocks, glad to use them up!

Today I finished these 51 blocks for the Log Cabin Heart. I could have finished them sooner, but I kept getting distracted. I have to draw out the pattern for the next set of blocks, I hope to do that this evening, I don't know exactly when I will start them. Next week I have garments to put together, I got them cut out this week. I don't anticipate them taking long, they are fairly simple, a skirt and a top and a jacket. I intend to do it leisurely and enjoy it, no mistakes that way, and I don't need them until mid April.

Down here on the treadle I still have a lot of Pinwheels to get through, I don't anticipate getting them done for about another month. That too is another thing to take leisurely and enjoy.

My daughter-in-law Rosa isn't recovering very fast from her surgery. It seems that they pinched a nerve in her side and the pain is a lot more intense then it was supposed to be. That too is something that happens with her due to her unique health problems. The pain then causes her to have seizures. David went to the hospital and saw her this morning. I didn't go because I am not feeling good and I didn't want to expose her to anything if I am coming down with something. They aren't talking about sending her home very soon, she is not able to get up much the pain is too intense. Poor girl, I hope she does better soon. It's also very hard on Timothy, my son and her husband. I am glad they have no small children.

So with one thing and another I have been a little distracted, and it is so easy for me to get distracted anyway, but I am going to try to focus on just a couple of things this weekend and maybe get them done before I go onto the next. I would like to get Love Ring to the halfway point tomorrow.

Shown here being held on the table by Happy. She growled at me when I moved it over under the machine. I think she might have scratched me if my hands hadn't been under the quilt. Oh well, she'll be in a better mood next time.

I finished this Pineapple quilt today. It was very cold so I didn't take it out to get a good picture today, I hope for one tomorrow.

Lately I haven't been using a bias cut binding; it saves fabric. I use strips two and a quarter inches wide, and fold it double the raw edges even with the edge of the quilt. I don't put it on continuously either. I start and stop at the corners a quarter of the inch from the edge, leaving about two inches of each s

trip for seam allowance to miter the corners.

For perfectly mitered corners I draw a straight line from the corner to the outside edge of the doubled binding.

Then draw a right angle, then sew on the angle and trim the seam close.

It makes a perfect corner almost every time. Then I sew on the right side, my rule of thumb is: If I quilt it by machine I sew the binding on by machine; if I quilt it by hand I sew the binding by hand.

I like the way it looks and I am very happy with the way the quilt has turned out.

I have five more basted and tomorrow, after I cut out a skirt and top, I will start quilting the next one, the Drunkard's Path Love Ring I think.

I haven't decided what color of thread yet, it will largely depend on what I have.

It's late in the day, I took a nap. Now I need to do a little piecing on the treadle, a relaxing and enjoyable way to work, I hope to get the rest of the Pinwheel blocks pieced in the next couple of weeks.

No pictures today, I spent the day at the hospital. My dear daughter-in-law Rosa, Timothy's wife had a surgery today and I kept him company in the waiting room When I left she had come out of surgery with minimal blood loss and was doing very well. I didn't do any sewing today except hand piecing while we were waiting. It was much too important to be there for the two of them. I will go and see her tomorrow.

Today we went to the butterfly house. It's the first time so far this year. It was so lovely to sit in the heat and watch all the life fluttering about.

 This big beautiful babies are actually moths. They will be about 8 inches across when they are fully expanded and flying around.

 The quail are used to keep the ant population down, they are such little cuties with a high pitched loud voice. It's hard to believe such a strident sound comes from something so little.

Anyway we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

It hasn't been cold yesterday and today. Not warm enough for me to sit outside yet, and the basement is still cold, but it only takes a few minutes for the heater to take the chill off. I intend to sit at the treadle and get some more Pinwheel blocks made today.

I am well over halfway done with the current quilt I'm quilting upstairs so I took time out to make a green basket which has met with a lot of approval.

It's only 2 weeks before Rose's 1st sale so I will get all my finished projects over to her house this weekend. I hope I have a lot of success this year, I want to save the money for our trip out to Washington in August 2018, it will take a while to save enough. A couple quilts sold would pay the fare for the both of us. No more heart attacks on David's part though, if he knows what is good for him.

Well, to work I've played enough for one day.

David finally got around to looking at the car to see what was wrong with it. It's not a totally impossible amount of money to fix, just more than we have right now. The most aggravating thing for me is that it was completely preventable, and wouldn't have cost anything if it had been dealt with in a timely manner. Oh well.

I finally got around to making the green basket I have been planning for the last couple of months. Tomorrow I will make the lid.

Day before yesterday I cleaned the bedroom. Yesterday I cleaned the stairs. This afternoon I will clean at least part of our little sitting room. I am planning to take a couple of days for it because there is so much stuff out there and I have to move a lot of it. And throw a lot of it away. David doesn't believe in putting anything away so there is a lot of stuff that I will just pile on his desk and let him deal with it.

If I come across as annoyed with my husband it is only because I am. I had just better get over it though, it's all a state of mind. Anything else would be just because I can't let things go, a problem I have had all my life. When I was having therapy my counselor kept telling me to let things go, but she never explained how to let things go, and I am still having trouble figuring that one out. I had just better go clean, when one is working hard they are apt to forget they are angry. I expect it is just too tiring to do anything else.

Yesterday I sorted and measured the quilt tops in the tub I brought down from the attic and look at what I found!

I made these feathered star blocks when I was pregnant with John, he was born in 1989. I was doing medallion quilts at the time. For some reason I thought these blocks weren't "good enough", and don't ask me why. I haven't decided how I will put them together. There are 8. It's been a long time since I made a medallion quilt, and I am thinking doing another one would be a lot of fun. As well as challenging. I loved making the feathered stars, and I have a lot more ideas that could come into play. But not until I get the Log Cabin Heart top done. I have so many quilts started now I don't have a spare machine to work on.

That probably sounds ridiculous, I have 7 machines. Ernestine my treadle, I am working on 6 quilts on her; that is ridiculous too. Vanessa has two Drunkard's Paths on her. David's using Inez. I'm quilting on Juki, and Brunehilde is being used for clothes and the Log Cabin. Martha gets used for baskets. I wonder if I need another machine? As I said before: ridiculous. The blocks can wait for Brunehilde to be free.

This afternoon if it ever warms up down here I am going to clean my bedroom, it got really out of hand while I was sick, and i knocked my sewing basket over and lost my thimble so I am going to have to clean to find it. The nice thing about such a small room is that it doesn't take so long to clean it and I can scrub the floor before my back gives out entirely. It's mostly finding a place to put all the junk, but I have plenty of garbage bags so solve that problem.

Next week my dear daughter-in-law Rosa has to have an hysterectomy. Pre-cancer. It would be scary if they hadn't found it early. I'm sorry that she has to have it done, but I'd be sorrier yet if she didn't and got cancer. Ambrosina and I will spend the day at the hospital with Timothy, Rosa won't know we are there, but he will need the support. I have spent too many days waiting in the hospital not to know how important that is.

So time to get busy, after the cleaning comes the fun part, more sewing!

After yesterdays marathon basting of quilts I had some major organizing and straightening of my sewing corner upstairs before I could do much quilting. I also had to go through the tub of quilt tops that I brought down from the attic so I could get it put out of the way. There were some old friends that I hadn't thought about for years, one I had totally forgotten about.

 This one. I think it is a variation on Drunkard's Path, it has been so long since I made it I can't even remember it. It's the only time I ever bought fabric and made a two color quilt of the same two fabrics and I don't care for it all that much, I will quilt it. It will look a lot like one out of a catalog, but it will be done.

 This one is called Flowering Fern. It is completely hand appliqued. I had always planned to hand quilt it, but that's never going to happen. I would rather have it done for the enjoyment of it. I love machine quilting, and I think it will look just as nice.

 This is called Kentucky chain. It's been done for a long time. These tops are some really old UFOs.

 This one is called Double Heart, it too is hand appliqued and is going to be machine quilted, I know I will never get around to hand quilting.

 This one is a top that was put together by my Grandmother it is well over 40 years old. She mixed everything, double knits, linen, corduroy, maybe even some wools. It will be a challenge to quilt.

This one is fairly recent. It is lace, machine pieced and embroidered in a crazy quilt style. I only finished it a couple of years ago, it was in the works a lot longer.

There are still a lot of tops up in the attic, but the number is going down. I might not get to them for a while as I intend to quilt the tops I finish as they are finished. The older ones have to wait their turn. One thing I am sure of is that I am not going to generate any more UFOs.

It's actually still quite early in the day, Pinwheels on Ernestine the treadle for me.

We got 4 inches of snow over the weekend. I know a lot of places got more, but it was enough for me. It's cold, but that's ok too, our car is broken down and we can't go any where any way. Ambrosina is giving us lifts to necessary places and when the weather warms up wheel bearings are a pretty easy fix.

This was a long day for me. I basted quilts. I really hate basting, so it didn't make sense to move the dining room around and put all the leaves in the table for just one quilt. I basted six.

 Drunkard's Path Polka Dots.

 Another Pineapple, this time with one inch wide strips finishing at a half inch. I like this better that with the wider strips.

 Drunkard's Path Love Ring variation.

 An applique quilt made from feed sacks, not of my making.

Alphabet log cabin.

Spider Web.

I am very tired, but I feel virtuous. I basted them today and now I won't have to bast for a couple of months. These were all the quilts in the tub I had down here and one from a tub up in the attic. It turns out that I had already made a back for one of them so, since I had enough pins I went ahead and basted it. There are 6 more quilt tops in the tub I brought down from the attic. One of them has a back I made for it before I put it up in the attic. The other 5 I will make backs for when I get the quilting done on the basted ones. Two of those tops are hand applique and I am not sure how I will quilt them. One of them is a top my Grandmother made, and it has to be over 40 years old. I can't remember about the other 2 offhand, but they will be a nice surprise to look forward to.

After a short break I will work on some more Pinwheel blocks. I know that I have made a lot of progress, but now it seems like I have a lot more to get done than I started with. Well I do I guess, I sorted through 2 more tubs of half-square triangle units. When I am done then I will not have to do any for a long time, there are some more sewn but they aren't cut out, I don't know when I will do that either, they can wait, I am not in any hurry because when I get them all turned into blocks I will have half a dozen quilts tops I will have to put together. And baste. Oh dear, I think I'll just bask in the moment with the ones I just finished basting, no use to look too far ahead.

This is the sort of weather we expect in March. Seventy degrees one day, snowing a couple of days later. It won't last long, it will start warming up tomorrow. I like to think of it as winter's last gasp.

My assistant was being her usual helpful self this morning, I wasn't using Brunehilde, my Viking, so it wasn't as difficult to get things done as some other days might be. I had some sliver trimming to do on some Hourglass and Pinwheel blocks and that took quite a bit of time. I also worked on the Log Cabin Heart blocks on Juki, which the assistant only unthreaded twice before she settled down behind Brunehilde. I use Brunehilde mostly for garment construction and embroidery or when I have a quilt I under Juki's needle. Brunehilde doesn't really quilt well.

My injuries from falling down the stairs are a lot better, I can actually sit down without wincing now. Going up and down the stairs is still painful, but not as bad. I have too much padding to injure myself seriously. The bruises on the other hand are spectacular, too bad they are where I can't show them off.

So as I have quite a bit to get done this afternoon I had better get busy, my favorite thing to be.

Night before last I missed my step on the stairs in the middle of the night, landed on my bum and bounced down about 5 stairs to the landing. Oww oww oww. Yesterday I was hurting so bad in the afternoon that I slept, all afternoon, then I went to bed early. I don't like days where I don't get much done, but some days it's impossible to keep going.

This is the plan I have for some of the small Pinwheels. The colors won't be the same, those were just scraps I had handy that I could make the block out of to see what size they were going to turn out. I have specific plans for putting them together too, I am kind of excited about this quilt. The blocks will finish at 15 inches so I won't need a lot of them. I have a lot of the little pinwheels though, so maybe two of them, I don't know. I am going to use sashing and cornerstones to set them together, using more pinwheels for the cornerstones, that will use up more of them. Maybe pinwheels for the border too, I haven't got that far. I was thinking of piecing some sort of block for the large corners, but I think I like the simplicity of the solid corner. It will give me a chance to do some fancy quilting, which I love.

I am better today, I couldn't treadle on Ernestine yesterday, but I am going to try this afternoon. David is working on log cabin blocks and enjoying himself, he just told me his plan for the next one. I told him he couldn't start another one until the ones he is working on are quilted. I am not going to quilt them for him.

I went up into the attic this morning, there was something I needed up there, so I brought another tub of unquilted tops down, since I was up there. I didn't count or sort I just brought them down. Sorting and counting can come later. I will resist the temptation until I get the tub that I just made backs for quilted. It's nice to have something to look forward to.

Monday the temperature was 70 and we didn't wear coats. We are expecting snow this weekend. This is pretty typical for March here in Sioux Falls, but I am so looking forward to spring, and it is close. I like the hot weather of summer and fall too. I like warm. Winter has it's own beauty I know, but I don't enjoy it much. Ambrosina is planning her garden. Yes we did, we made it through another winter.

Just a short post, I had my BPD class this afternoon, went to a thrift shop and Walmart. I am tired. I finished piecing the 5th back this morning, they are all folded and put back into the tub until next week. Tomorrow is cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. For right now I am going to take a nap.

I slept badly last night, for some reason my CPAP wasn't working and I couldn't breathe. The upshot was I was awake by 8 this morning and I got up and got busy; usually I'm starting work about ten-thirty, after my coffee and checking my email. I have 5 tops that I want to get backs made for. I finished 3 this morning. So with the one I did yesterday making four I only have one more back to make. Then I will clean out my upstairs sewing corner.

You think it needs it? First assistant Happy was seriously annoyed that she couldn't get into her favorite spot behind the machine. She unthreaded the other one 5 times this morning as I was sewing.

Here you can see her "holding" the thread for me.

Tomorrow, if I have time, I will finish the last back and start putting stuff away. I used so much fabric that I had set aside for backs that I could move it into a smaller tub and use the big tub to put the unfinished quilts into while they are waiting their turn to be quilted. I found several small projects in the tub, and I will spend a morning finishing them up. After that, for the rest of the week, I will try to finish the Log Cabin Heart blocks. They would go fast if I didn't get distracted on other things.

For this afternoon I will work on some Pinwheel blocks on Ernestine, I am averaging about 4 dozen a day, but half the work is already done. I will probably have a lot more that one quilt each pattern, I don't have to quilt them all at the same time though. I know they will turn into UFOs. My focus is on the older UFOs right now. I have some tops up in the attic that I finished before we left Vashon in 1998. I don't know how many, but a lot. I will quilt one pattern each of the new ones and let the rest wait until after the ones in the attic are done.

After the 5 upstairs are quilted that is. Oh boy!!

When I cam upstairs this morning the first thing I saw was this:

The door was opened. There was a lovely warm breeze coming in. The cats were out on the porch rolling in sunny spots. We did it! We made it through another winter! I am sure we will have more cold, but not as cold. We might even have more snow, but it won't last long.

Ambrosina is getting ready to plant her starts for the garden. David was out working in the shop. He had an errand to run and when he got home he had to take off his sweatshirt, he was too warm.

I bound Cat Crazy Log Cabin this morning and when we went out to take the picture I didn't even put a jacket on. What bliss.

This is the back, upside down. Woops.

There are 5 more quilt tops in the tub, I counted them this morning. I am going to piece the all the backs, next week I will baste as many as I have pins for. Once these are done then I can bring the really old UFOs down from the attic, I have probably forgotten most of those that I have up there. This is the year that I get them all finished!

I finished quilting Cat Crazy Log Cabin this afternoon. I won't have time to make the binding and bind it until Monday. I am pleased to have another UFO out of the way now. I can't remember if there are four or five unquilted tops left in the tub but the level is going down. I am going to piece the backs for all of them after I do the binding on Monday, then when I baste, I will baste as many as I can until I run out of pins or time or energy or all three. Picture on Monday.

Meanwhile.

I sorting the pinks, I hope I will be able to finish sorting through the tub today. I will have them sorted into 3 projects and I will have an empty tub to put something else in. After that there will be some intensive sewing at the machine. I have the projects planned and an idea in mind that I will work on first, there will be more on that later, but Pinwheels will be in the center so I will need to get those done first. I will also be using them in the borders so I will need plenty. I have oranges and browns left to sort though.

So after a couple of other tasks I will get busy, I am eager to get started on my idea and see if it will turn out as well as I think.