I almost forgot to get the final photos of Red Sunset! I had a nice opportunity yesterday to go outside and get the official photos. 

This quilt was made to replace one on the guest bed that's now too short since I added a foam topper to the mattress. I started this in the summer of 2022.
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The back is a hand dyed mandala that shows off the quilting nicely.

I have a project page here that has lots of close up photos of the quilting if you aren't already tired of seeing the photos on the previous blog posts.

This is going to be a very short post because I'm writing it right after the Super Bowl. The big news is that the quilting on Red Sunset is DONE! 

I'm really happy with the motif I settled on for the background filler. It ties to one of the interior motifs and, once it's washed it will kind of disappear.
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I love how the feathers turned out.
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Here's the back.
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I'll have lots more (and better) photos after I get the binding on.

Now I'm on to veterans quilts. I have finished 2 of them but I haven't trimmed or photographed them yet.

One of the things I love about blogging is that, sometimes, it makes me do something just so I can post a journal for the day. Yesterday was almost a no-accomplishment day but the blog motivated me to do a little quilting.

I didn't get much done because I needed to shop for clothes and that's something that I detest. We have an event coming up soon and I need one of those universal wedding/funeral outfits. I haven't bought clothes like that in at least 10 years and it shows. I mentioned it to my friend and she agreed to guide me through a shopping day. It was somewhat painful, especially for her, but we found a lot of good bargains and I now have some nice enough clothes for events. I'm grateful for her help and guidance. I will say that there was one casual dress on sale at Free People that I loved and she hated and I can't get it out of my head.....I might go back and get it. I'd wear it the next time I see her. 
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After shopping I stopped by Mom's to do her monthly extermination treatment. I bet you didn't know that I do extermination services! I got home around 6 and after dinner I realized that I didn't have anything to blog about so I decided that I'd go downstairs and, at least, quilt around the gold triangles. I mimicked the spikey motif from around the flower spikes on the inside.  That didn't even take 30 minutes.
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After finishing that section I realized that I could use the same motif as the background and I got started on the last part of the quilting. I got it about 25% done and I WILL finish this quilt today!

Then we are going to cut down some trees on the property. I love chainsaw day because our property has turned into a jungle in the 20 years we've been here. After that I can spent the weekend on veterans quilts until Super Bowl kickoff. 

I was very happy to get back to quilting yesterday and tackled all of the gold quilting. There were only 3 areas and I really struggled with quilting plans. My friend, Brenda, visited Monday and she helped me devise this simple motif for the center. I'm really struggling to keep the quilting from being too dense because this is definitely a bed quilt. 

I did some simple quilting in the star points and repeated a circle motif in the diamonds. It's just enough quilting.
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Something similar in the triangles on the outside border.
Now I just have to do 2 background areas with some sort of filler. One of the areas is the top edge of these triangles all the way to the edge of the quilt. My nature is to do a really dense filler and I've got to talk myself away from that.
I think I will have this done by Friday and can them tackle some fun and fast veterans quilts.
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Here are the cactus fabrics that I bought to make some placemats as a remembrance of our trip. I also have 2 other sets of gift placemats that I need to make. I think that while I'm quilting veterans quilts I'm going to try to make some placemat "tops" and get them ready for quilting in a week or so.
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I also got a really cool postcards in the mail from Nancy S. Isn't it cute?

​Today is dyeing day and I might have some quilting time in the evening.

Tuesday evening it was time to start quilting the big wide open spaces of the Red Sunset quilt. I decided on feathers. My feathers aren't perfect but each time I do them, they get better.
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I just can't emphasize enough how much Bethanne Nemesh's Feather Fiesta class helped me. I learned how to do feather branches and really improved my feather shapes.

When the quilt is on the bed I don't think this quilting will show so much. That's how I want it. I felt like having bold quilting thread would compete with all of the pieced elements.
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Here it is from the back and the feather quilting really shows up a lot more than the photo implies. The thread is maroon colored and really shows on the back. The next time I quilt feathers I want to work on making better spines. Looking up close, my spines are a little messy. No one sleeping under this quilt will notice, but I do.
All-in-all, I'm really happy with it. I think I'm about halfway done with the quilt now. I'll make some more progress before we leave for vacation and should finish the quilting the week we get back.
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I didn't do a ot of making this weekend because there was more socializing than normal. It was all good! On Friday I had lunch with my Mom and cousin and then drinks with my girlfriends from work. There were errands in between.  Sunday was watching football with a friend in Charlottesville. Saturday was my "making day". During the football games I worked on my summer sweater. It's kind of a vest that I want to wear over tank tops. I like how the colors of this yarn are working out. I wear lots of dull greens, blues and grays so this should work well for me.
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I wanted to get in some quilting time so I decided that I'd start with the areas that I wanted to quilt in blue. These are the smallest areas and I knew I could get them done this weekend and give me some small sense of accomplishment.  There are 4 of these stars. All of the spikey motifs in the quilt will get simple outline quilting so that they puff on the quilt.
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There are 8 of these sections. I quilted feathers because there's a very large area that will be feathered and I wanted the feathers to repeated somewhere else.
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Here's that section from the back.

That's all I have for today. This week is going to be busy preparing for a trip we're taking this weekend. We're going to escape to somewhere sunny and warm for a week and I can't wait. Here's a hint to where we're going: we're going to hike, visit some old graves in a dead town and visit a modern monument to ecohubris.

I had some chores that needed to be done yesterday, like filing sales tax, and none of those things happened. Instead I worked a little on several things. I finished all of the blue bow ties. Now I will sew them together in sets of 4 before I assemble the whole top. 
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Then I went to the craft group at the library and I worked on the shawl. I finished the first skein and started a second. I think the whole thing will take 3 skeins. This pattern goes pretty quickly.

I finished off the day with about an hour of quilting. I rolled the quilt down a bit and finished the bottom part of the center star (yellow arrow). Next I'll work on the sections with the blue arrow.
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Today and tomorrow I'll be sewing with my quilt club. I work on veterans quilts there and this is the next kit. I'll sort through it tomorrow but I think there might be 2 quilts in this bag.
At some point I need to file the taxes too. Maybe while I'm watching one of the playoff games.

I finished piecing this quilt in October 2022 and I've been procrastinating on the quilting ever since. Now we've got some friends visiting in March and I want this quilt done for the guest room bed. I set myself a goal of getting it loaded, basted and ditch stitching complete in a week.

​Time to get started.

I dyed the backing a few weeks ago and the hardest part is getting the quilt loaded centered. I wrote a tutorial for how to center a quilt back several years ago. I still do it the same way.
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I start from the center and work my way to the top and then the bottom. Once I have the center set I pin through the center seam to the back and make sure I have it lined up before I start basting. Once I get the center lined up the rest of the process goes pretty smoothly.
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I have no idea how I'm going to quilt it so I decided to start by doing all of the stitch-in-the-ditch to get it stabilized. By the time I'm done I hope I have some ideas.
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My SID stitching isn't perfect. There was a time, early in my longarming, that I would have pulled out this wonky line and re-stitch it. Over time I've learned that NO ONE notices this once the quilt is done, not even me. I do the best I can and keep going.
I'll keep plugging away at the SID through the weekend.

Tomorrow and Saturday are sewing days with my quilt club so I'll be starting my first veterans quilt for 2024.

I love it!
​The top is done and someday I'll have a new quilt for this bed.

Remember when I said to be patient about these blue spikes and whether there was enough contrast? I think they are perfect on the corners of the mattress.

I also like the way that the gold spikes frame out the edges of the bed and the blue strips fade into the matching bed frame upholstery. 

For now, this one goes in the closet probably until after the first of the year. I've got to get to working on Christmas postcards now so I can be ready to make new sample quilts for Paula Nadelstern later in November. Plus my friend is coming tomorrow for 3 weeks and we go to the beach Sunday!

I'll at least have one crochet update before the weekend. 

This photo is all I have to show for my weekend!

We went clay shooting Saturday and had a great time but I didn't take any photos. I haven't done any shooting for over a year so my expectations were low. There were 4 guys (all hunters) and 2 wives. Chris said I was the second best shooter of the group! I was at least the 3rd best. All those lessons I took actually stuck and that was a nice surprise. As a bonus, it was an absolutely beautiful day to be outside.

Shooting took all of Saturday but I had finished piecing my 4 Red Sunset corners on Friday and spent all day Sunday ripping out the papers. You can see that it was a huge mess but I didn't mind. This is kind of a zen activity and fine work for watching football. Sometime this week I will get the corners pressed and sewn to the quilt. I'm already starting to think about what might be my next big project. I will definitely do more Judy Niemeyer projects in the future.

This week is going to be a weird week schedule wise and my posting will be intermittent for the next few weeks. My friend, Laura, is coming in from England Thursday and we will be going to the beach on Sunday for a few days. I've moved my dyeing day to today but should be able to get Red Sunset sewn together tomorrow or Wednesday. After that's done I need to get back to the longarm and get some quits quilted. But I'm not going to stress about anything. After Thursday, and for the next 3 weeks, I'm going to do whatever Laura and I are in the mood to do.

​Today, I'm off to the dye studio.