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.

Another mostly uneventful day, the kind I love. Sewing, kids, Ambrosina and David laughing, coffee and more coffee. Not coughing as much and that's a relief.

I was sewing quietly along on the Cat Crazy Log Cabin and I broke a needle. I have been having a lot of problems with thread breaking on this one. It's a thick quilt, I used all kinds of corduroys and flannels and even some upholstery velvet. To top it off I machine embroidered all the seams with the fancy stitches on my machine. It looks really nice but it is so thick and I hit a seam with the needle and broke it. I think I may have been going too fast, I try to slow down when it looks like a thick spot, I missed it however. Replace the needle. Sew some more, no more really thick spots for a while I think; break the needle again. On investigation I found that I had somehow basted an opened safety pin in the middle of the 3 layers. It was not easy to get out and I had to rip out openings in several rows of quilting.

So I got it out, fixed the spots I ripped out and went back to sewing. When I broke the 3rd needle I decided it was time to quit.

Now it is time to sort out some more of these half-square triangles that I need for the next quilt. So I won't get too bored I will turn on Netflix. I don't imagine I will get bored anyway, sorting out fabrics is more like play to me, but sometimes there are so many shades of different colors it's hard to tell which pile something goes in and it will help to rest my eyes on something else for a few minutes.

We are supposed to have a warming trend now, getting up into the sixties over the weekend. Ambrosina says if it is not windy we might get out the barbeque. Mmm smells good already.

This morning as I was stitching happily away at the quilt I am quilting

 I came up with an idea to use the small Pinwheels in a quilt that has changed the focus on what I am going to be working on down here on Ernestine.

She's not as cluttered as she looks. Most of those blocks there only have one more seam to be done and put away.

It means I have to go through this tub of half-square triangles to find the colors I want.

These are two and a half inch square and it takes four of them to make a pinwheel. I am still not sure about which colors I will use, but I will sort them out by tone and then go from there. It will probably take me a couple of days to get through them and decide, but that is so much fun!!

Meanwhile I am recovering slowly. David is not coughing anymore, but I am. I am breathing easier though and not coughing as much. Maybe I'll get some energy back over the next couple of days, I will be grateful for that! I hope I won't need to sleeps so much, it's such a waste of time!!.

Yesterday David and I went to the doctor and we both have walking pneumonia. I went ahead and gave myself permission to go to bed, and we both started on antibiotics. They are working very fast for David, he was asking about starting a Log Cabin quilt this morning and I heard his sewing machine a few minutes ago.

 When we got home it was still only noon so I sat down at the quilting machine and I finished Drunkard's Path. I was going to quilt up and down as well as across, but when I got the diagonals done I liked it so much that I decided to quit. It's quilted in gold so you can't see the pattern from a distance; I really like the way it turned out.

This is the back. I have decided that a pieced back is my "signature". I like pieced backs, they use up the odds and ends of fabrics that there is no other use for, also orphan and left over blocks. Fun too. This one has a little bit of pink on it. The pictures aren't as good as they could be, it was cold and snowing and we aren't feeling any too good, still, done is done and always good.

Tomorrow I hope I will be feeling better and can get a little more done on Log Cabin Heart, but for now I am going to take a nap, and hope I wake up with a little more energy to get some piecing on Pinwheels down here done. I probably will have to coach David on his Log Cabin block too. More fun!