After playing around with more sashing ideas and sending a dozen photos to my friend and making Chris look at all of them....

we decided in dark sashing with bright cornerstones. It's not really where I wanted to head with these quilts but it doesn't show off the blocks best. I dyed the fabric yesterday so might be able to start sewing Sunday.The small quilt will be the darkest shade of Jungle and the big quilt will be a blue similar to Royal. Now it's always possible that I get these fabrics dyed and then decide that I don't like them. That's OK, I can always dye more.

After dyeing yesterday I decided to focus on the Christmas cards a bit. I came up with a hippie-inspired card for the ice dyed trimmings. I ordered a silk screen to use with these strips that I fused to Wonder-Under. Now I'm working on an idea to use my Paula-quilt cut offs.

But honestly, I'm not working on much of anything. My dear husband brought home a cold from his Canada hunting trip and now it's my turn to enjoy it.

I made major progress on the "Paula" quilts this weekend. I got both quilted (maybe) and got the cats bound and the hanging sleeve sewn on. All I have left on that one is the label. I quilted the blue one too but I'm considering doing a little more quilting on it. I had a heck of a time with it. The best thread choice was a navy blue Bottom Line thread. I decided to use it in the needle and bobbin and it was nothing but trouble. I changed needles, re-threaded, played with tension.....everything. I finally got through the 9 9-patch center blocks. I switched to Invisifil for the borders and didn't have any problems at all. I've had issues quilting with Bottom Line in the needle before and hopefully I will remember not to try it again.

In other news I got the first vetnerans quilt top done! For something made completely random and really fast, I'm quite pleased. It will be quilted with a leaf pantograph  probably in green or brown thread because  I want the quilting to really show up on these quilts.  The quilt is what will make it seem more "whole" if that makes sense. I think I'll dye some dark green for the binding.

​For the second one I do need to cut some more strips and I'll get on that today.

There wasn't much accomplished yesterday at all. It was errand day. Mom and I had our monthly lunch with my cousin and did some shopping. Then we took a detour to check out a salvage grocery store that my friend has been raving about. I had never heard of a salvage grocery store but it's a cool concept. They get damaged goods and ungraded produce (the ugly but still good stuff) and sell it heavily discounted. It was an interesting field trip but it's too far of a drive for me to make to just to see what's there. My diet is so restricted that going to a store like that might only yield a couple of purchases. The only thing I might have bought yesterday was carrots. But it was cool to see the place very busy on a Thursday afternoon. Do you have one of these type stores near you?
I'll just stick with Wegmans and Kroger for my "special" foods. I used to have to go to Whole Foods (which I hate) so was thrilled when Wegmans moved to town. I'm pretty sure that the Richmond area has more grocery stores per capita than other place in the US. There seems to be a big grocery store on every block. (After typing that last sentence I asked Google and, as of 2015, I was right. We rank 3rd in the nation. We've added Publix, Aldi, Lidl and Wegmans since then.)

Anyway.......Today I will start quilting the "Paula" quilts. I want to have both quilted by tomorrow so that I can get them ready for hand stitching the binding during Sunday football. But I'll quilt this baby quilt that Mom made first. The printed fabric is kites so I think I will quilt loops and kites freemotion. I got it loaded last night so I should have it done in a couple of hours.

Isn't this a cute quilt? My friend, Anne, made it. She finished it a few years ago and somewhere along the line I promised to quilt it for her but I keep avoiding it because I'm at a total blank on HOW to quilt it. Well I spent the last 2 days hanging out with her at the river and she had it positioned exactly where I couldn't avoid it any longer. I'm surprised she didn't have it between the sheets of my bed but it was almost as obvious as that! 

Don't get me wrong, I want to quilt it and if I had a remote idea I could get it quilted in a couple of sessions. I'm cool with figuring out the background quilting but I want to do something special to highlight the crab but I'm totally clueless....and idealess.

What do you think?

For those of you who want the pattern, this quilt was designed by Lisa-Marie Sanders and we had to get special permission to make this one copy. If you have to have your own crab quilt you might be able to get in touch with her here.

I've got two more veterans quilts ready for quilting and that's all I can do until I get more tops that will pair with the 3 that I have on the closet. So once these 2 are quilted today I need to get another quilt ready to load. I was a little surprised to find that I only have 3 quilt tops! Of course I have big quilting plans for all of these.

I have this one that I finished last summer (May 2018). I more or less know how I might quilt it but I don't have a back for it yet. I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle this.

This postage stamp quilt is my oldest UFO. I started it in 1998! I think I finished this top last year.  I'm pretty sure that I'm going to do some Spirograph motifs on this one and I'm not really ready to do that again yet.

The third, and smallest, quilt is this one. It was done during Barbara Brackman's Grandmother's Choice block program. It's the sister quilt to Lura's Choice. Both quilts have the same blocks but they look completely different. I think this will be the next one. I'll spend some time this weekend thinking about quilting motifs.

But my #1 priority for the weekend is to piece the binding for Lost My Marbles. I really want that quilt done by the end of the month.

The past 2 days I really pushed and got the rest of the mulching done. I had projected 7 truckloads but it ended up being 8. The last one was brutal because it rained Wednesday night so the mulch was wet and extra heavy and I had to wheelbarrow all of it. Usually I can just back the truck up to the tree and rake it out but the canopy on the last 2 trees was too low for that. We've got to do some serious pruning on the maples this winter! I cold have waited to do the last truckload for a day or two but I really just wanted to get it over with.

I usually do this chore in February and March when the weather is more pleasant but we had so much rain this winter and Spring that I couldn't drive the truck in the yard. The weather was a little cooler this week so that's why I had to push to get it done. Today I'm exhausted and my allergies are a little crazy but I'm happy to be done with yard stuff for a white.

I'm not sure how much I'll get done today but I thought I'd at least organize my to do list.

I have fabrics for a new Stash Pack that need to get ironed, cut and packaged. These have been patiently waiting a week. Meanwhile there are yards and yards in the soak baths now that will be ready for ironing and photography later this weekend.

I got the cutting table moved out of the sewing room so I'm ready to block this quilt. But first I need to make the 2 repairs. That's first on my agenda for this afternoon.

After the Marbles quilt repairs are done I'm going to knock out a few veterans quilts before I pick my next longarm project. I have 3 "next projects" to choose from. They will all be very involved and 2 of them are huge.

​But today I'm going to mostly relax!

Isn't is interesting how we can go in the same rooms every day and we eventually just stop seeing what's there. Maybe it's a pile of clothes in the corner of the closet or a stack of fabric on a shelf. Our remodel has really forced me to look and see the accumulations around me. We had to unpack the kitchen and family room and fit it all on the foyer, living room, sewing room and guest bedroom. It's total disarray.

We are watching TV in the sewing room and that's working just fine except that now I have been actually looking at this wall. Usually when I'm in here the TV is on but I don't really watch it much. But for the past week I've been looking at the mess and it's been driving me nuts. Last night I had had enough.

I have also reached my clutter tolerance for the cutting table, currently the dinner table.

The project wall is also a total mess. So I got busy to see how much I could clean up in 3 hours. It turns out that I was able to fill 2 trash bags, create a 2 foot stack of magazines for the recycle bin and a few dozen books to give away. 

I got the project wall back in order. The top of the cabinet would be clear if I could get to the bench where I store quilts that happens to be my kitchen pantry at the moment. Mostly I emptied a couple of bins and got things off the floor and in the shelves. I could easily empty more bins but since this was the last place I tackled I'll take what I've done and be happy for now.

The empty cutting table makes me feel like I can breathe again. All of the patterns and projects have been put in their appropriate places and a lot of junk was thrown out.

But the best of it is here. I actually got rid of a shelf! The remaining top shelf even has about 12" of empty space. Now I had room to put up the flowers that have been hanging out in the living room waiting for a home. I stuck them up with Command tape. 

I'm very much a function over form person when it comes to my work spaces but it is nice to have a little color in here now.

I got all of the the flowers from my booth put up in the sewing room and this makes me very happy....until they get covered in dust. But mostly I'm happy to have a little bit of order back to my room.

Oh boy do I love a 3-day weekend that I don't waste. It's been a long time since I've had 3 days to do whatever I wanted and I took full advantage.

I finished quilting the Indonesian Batik quilt.

I love how the quilting shows in the purple but completely disappears on the batik fabrics.

I haven't taken it off the frame yet because I have this much backing fabric left and it's the absolute perfect amount to fit in 4 placemats. The leftover of the leftovers are calling.

While I thought about placemats I got the veterans quilt tops sewn together. I'm really happy with the way it turned out and I already know that I'll quilt it with a wavy crosshatch. I will make more of these. It's a great way to use scraps of Jelly Rolls and goes together so quickly.

I have 24 leftover blocks. Theoretically, these could be made into 4 placemats but the size just isn't quite right. So I'll ponder some way to combine them with all the other scraps for the placemats.

On Saturday I didn't have any football to watch (Hokies eeked out a win Friday night) so I spent the day in the basement making soap. This 18 lbs of soap will cure to about 15 lbs and will be ready in early January.

And then I remembered that I needed to get my Christmas postcards done! I have 2 sets left to make and got one set started yesterday. I plan to have these done this week. They are simple and will be really cute.

So Michael came through Thursday evening. There wasn't much damage in my area. We did lose power for a couple of hours Thursday night but mostly there were some flooded roads and downed trees in Hanover County. The place where we do our quilt club meetings is owned by the county and we cannot use the space if schools are closed. Because of blocked roads schools were closed Friday so we couldn't sew.

Big bummer.

​Fortunately, I'm a quilter and I have other things I can do!

I decided to use the time to quilt Antelope Canyon. I did this one with a pantograph. It's going to be a quilt for the guest bed so no need for "special" quilting.  Quilting pantographs bores me so between each row I worked on cleaning up the dye studio and I have it ready for delivery of my new washing machine tomorrow.

I was a little nervous while quilting because I didn't have a lot of the color that I wanted to use. But my quilting luck was with me and I had "plenty" left over. This might even be enough to sew on the binding. 

​But I'm not doing the binding yet....

When I quilt I think about things and one of the things I was thinking about was how quickly Christmas is coming up. I stated making some thread trees earlier this year and I'm going to make about 10 more on the edges of Antelope Canyon before I take it off the frame. This is one of my goals for the week. The other is to start organizing all the fabric and supplies that I brought home form the show and get my living room back to being a living room.

Yesterday I was back in the dye studio all day to start restocking things. It's nice to be back in "normal"mode now that the show is over. This morning I finally finished editing all of the photos from the quilt show so that's what I have for you today. Just click on the gallery to go through the photos as a slide show.