The last fabric purchase of '08...

I dragged Mom to the local quilt shop (maybe that's too strong -- she goes willingly now) just before I left town the other day. The store had relocated since the last time I'd visited from a tiny, cramped dark house not without its charm but a little depressing to the spacious old pharmacy up the street. Now it's bright and airy, and it looks like they've doubled, if not tripled, their inventory. The staff even seems more buoyant, the quilts on the walls cheerier.

I could live there now, right over under the blues and purples...maybe move over by the greens every once in a while for a change of season. Put the piano in the corner with the blacks and whites and hope they won't notice.

There was SO much great fabric, it was a little overwhelming. Faced with so many fantastic options, the project ideas just start rushing into my head and I get a little tipsy thinking about all the possibilities.

Who needs alcohol when fabric can do the trick? Not necessarily a cheaper addiction, but it's much easier on the liver.

They've always had a great collection of Kaffee Fassett fabrics, and it looks like Westminster has jumped on the pre-cut bandwagon with "Westies," 6.5" strips packaged in different color ways. I'd never seen them before, and found the greens and purples hard to resist. Besides, it would have been rude to leave empty-handed after drinking in all that color...

I feel a Log Cabin coming on!

Happy New Year, everybody!

Famous last words...

"...beat the weather."

Right.

My four hour drive turned into a seven and a half hour adventure, due to a snowstorm that started five hours earlier than expected, a mass exodus of Chicagoans to places other than Chicago, and the fact that Michigan has no money and can't afford to plow their expressways.

But I made it home, and Archie was a trooper, sleeping most of the trip on the dashboard above the glove compartment. He got some surprised looks from other drivers as we crawled along at 40mph.

Weather notwithstanding, Christmas was a success, with lots of time spent with family and friends. My Monkey Girl loved her quilt, as I thought she might. There was some admiring of it...

Some dancing with it...

And, of course, some snuggling in it.

My mother cried when she unfolded her anniversary quilt. But because I promised she wouldn't show up all teary-eyed on the blog for all the world to see, we just have Archie, who, outside of a brief confrontation with a camel, inexplicably left both the tree and the creche totally alone. Maybe that was my Christmas miracle?

We spent a day with my brother's little guys (note continued use of my flannel birthday quilt)...

And were entertained with some Chris-tmas carols...

And, of course, there was sewing. Binding, to be exact.

Two weeks of hand sewing can really do a number on your wrists. I finished it on Saturday, and my sister was very happy with the results. She was also happy she didn't have to help.

The return trip to Chicago was windy, but uneventful. The snow is completely gone, though we're expecting some tonight. Time to clean up the mess I left last week -- and get down to more sewing!

Hope everybody's Christmas was wonderful!

C'est finis...

And there was much dancing in the Great Hall...

I watched (OK, listened to) over FOURTEEN HOURS of TiVo this weekend. To say I'm slow would be an understatement. My butt hurts from sitting in one place for so long, but it's done. And I have never been so happy about finishing a quilt. Now I just have to find my printable fabric for a label...and I have NO idea where it might be, I haven't used it in a year -- it could be anywhere!

Too bad I'm giving it away -- it kind of matches the blues in my living room...

I also managed to come close to finishing this one, too...it's done except for the (hah!) binding, which I'll finish later this week. Sorry sis, you're getting this incomplete. Blame it on Mom.

I think it's safe to say I'll never do the flying geese with all flannel ever again -- too many lumps. I ironed the seams open where I could, but it still made quilting difficult. I got these really tiny stitches as the machine approached a knob, and these really loooong ones on the downside. Not my best work, obviously, but once it's washed and all puckery, who's going to know?

Archie gets into packing tape

The backing is the absolutely luscious Thimbleberries flannel. It's incredibly soft, and a wonderful Art Nouveau design that's a good contrast in style to the front.

Tomorrow I fill the sleigh with presents and hit the road. There's a winter storm warning for Illinois and Michigan starting mid-day tomorrow, so I'm hoping I can get an early start and beat the weather.

Not sure if there's wireless at Mom & Dad's, so Happy Holidays, readers! Hope your Christmas is warm and cuddly...just like our quilts!

Pefect weather for binding...

Twenty-eight degrees and falling to four tonight. Eight inches of wet, heavy, crusty snow on the ground. Good day to stay inside, drink hot chocolate with steamed milk, and sew. And sew. And sew.

Guess what I'm doing all day? Sewing? How'd you know?

I really don't have the attention span for this.

Thanks so much for all the encouragement and helpful comments. It's moving slightly faster -- I rounded my second corner this afternoon. Hardly the home stretch, but I'm getting there.

I still don't think there's a chance in hell I'm going to finish this by the time I leave town. Worst case scenario, it gets wrapped up as is and Mom and I can finish it next week, though I'm not so sure just how enthused she'll be to have to finish her own Christmas gift.

Now that I have more than just a small section to look at, I absolutely love the way it looks! I used a two and a quarter-inch strip to start, so the binding is nice and narrow. I'm a sucker for the stripes, and the hand finishing was definitely the way to go here.


And in an effort to multi-task...here's the Malibu Monkeys quilt in its entirety, fresh from the dryer. It's a little more haphazard than I'd originally envisioned it would be, but this is what happens when you have neither a plan nor enough blue blocks. I think my Monkey Girl is going to love it no matter what.

I really wanted it to be the right size so the back was a seamless landscape of monkeys and beach. It fit perfectly, finishing at about 40" x 50".

No, it's not your eyes --the lighting here is frighteningly yellow.

All right, enough messing around on the blog -- there's sewing to be done!

Deck the halls...or not

Given the fact that I have absolutely no confidence that Archie wouldn't destroy the Christmas tree in a heartbeat, this is the extent of my decorating this year: a reindeer I forgot to pack with the rest of the stuff last January, and two lodgepole pine cones I brought back from Lake Tahoe several years ago.

Never mind that the pine cones are on the mantel all year long, anyway. I don't have a lot of unbreakables to work with here.

Sad, I know, but I have a fairly sizeable collection of Christopher Radko ornaments, as well as a whole lot of Shiny Brites that have been in the family since the early 50's, none of which mixes very well with a psycho little beast who literally bounces off the walls when he gets hyper. It's a low-key kind of Christmas here. Almost too un-Christmas-y.

So I went looking through some pictures and found these from last year:

My best buddy Gershwin, who never bothered the tree, the ornaments, and certainly never bounced off any walls.

Best cat ever. Maybe I should have considered cloning?

I'm delusional...

I seem to have overestimated my hand-sewing skills. By quite a bit.

I finished the little quilt binding on the machine in a snap. I was all pleased with myself, even treated myself to some cookies.

Then I sat down to the big quilt with my needle and thread.

Keeping in mind that I'd never done this before (I know, I know -- all those quilts and never hand-sewn a binding? For shame, Kate!), I allowed for some trial and error, some unstitching, and a few choice four-letter words, but basically envisioned myself whip, whip, whip stitching my way through it with AmandaJean efficiency and gift wrapping tomorrow night.

Dream on.

In the little time before and after work this week (which might well be the source of the problem: too friggin' much time spent at the office), I've gotten less than one side done. One side! Of a queen-sized quilt. Not even. In four days.

I was under the (apparently very mistaken) impression that this would go a lot faster. I calculated my actual foot-per-day progress, and if I continue at this pace, I will be done somewhere around January 23rd.

And two more quilts to finish in the next seven days.

Time for start hoping for a Christmas miracle!

That light at the end of the tunnel's getting brighter...

Busy work week or not, this is my goal: to get the little quilt and the big quilt bound, wrapped and ready before Friday.


Let the binding begin!

Cookie Fest 2008...

Every year, my cousin and I get together and bake Grandma's cookies in an effort to lend some tradition to the season. Grandma was an awesome baker, having brought her skills -- and not much else -- with her from a small town in southern Austria just after the turn of the century.

Husarenkrapfen. Magdelenenschnitten. Lebkuchen. Spritz. Pfefferneusse. The names of them rolled off her tongue, but were hard for me to pronounce and made them seem so exotic, something to cherish. These weren't everyday cookies you wolfed down with a glass of milk; they were the kind of cookies that you took tiny, tiny bites of so they'd last as long as possible. They were the kind of cookies that you got as rewards for good grades and good behavior.

Grandma's been gone since both my cousin and I were teenagers, but just opening a tin filled with her honey ginger cookies propels me back to my childhood, where the fat red flowered cookie jar with the crack in the lid sat waiting on the breakfront in her dining room, filled to the brim in anticipation of our visit.

While I can't hold a candle to her talents, we do what we can to keep her legacy alive.

We've added some of our own favorites to the baking list over the years, but have scaled back at the same time. Twelve-hour days of baking 30-40 dozen cookies like we did ten years ago are a little beyond our reach these days, so we pick a few and go from there.

This year, my cousin had to bake 27 sets of star tree kits for her daughter's first grade holiday party -- that's six star-shaped, nut-free/citrus-free sugar cookies per set in graduated sizes. The kids will add a peppermint between each one and create a precarious tree of cookie, held together by frosting. It sounds risky.

Cookie Fest 2008 kicks off with tree kits and reindeer

In a stroke of genius, she sprinkle-coded each different size of cookie so she could tell them apart -- after a while, one layer starts looking like the next. A pretty neat trick, if you ask me.

I started in on the reindeer and Santa sugar cookies (with a few snowflakes thrown in for good measure), which we'll both ice later this week. Then we made Brazil nut crescents, chocolate peppermint Spritz, and finally, my all-time favorite, the Magdelenenschnitten. They're lemony, cake-like cookies with whipped egg whites, sugar and almonds on top.

Magdelenenschnitten. I promise, this is my last food photo!

Those may not make it back home for Christmas. They might be gone within the week.

The cookie list was shorter this year (I think all the tree kits did us in), but the rewards just as great. Lots of good family time, good conversation, and a chance to remember Grandma, who probably had no idea her two youngest grandchildren would be the ones to carry the torch.

At last...

A day all to myself.

To sleep in.

To savor my coffee and enjoy a long lunch.

To catch up on "Gray's Anatomy."

To quilt.

Which would be moving along much faster if this weren't happening every time I turn my back...

It's almost done, though! Could be cause for celebration!

Just when we were feeling all proud and hopeful about Chicago politics...

My smile for the day...

I just got this in an e-mail this morning from my Monkey Girl's mother:


What does the Tooth Fairy do with all those teeth, anyway? Make jewelry to sell so she has money to give all those toothless children? Or does she just have a really, really big basement?

Seems that she'd be happy not to have to collect one every once in a while...

Do you want some cheese with that whine?

I hate not having the time to make stuff. It makes me crabby. And whiny. So I guess this is a warning, readers. My apologies in advance, it could get ugly.

With a solid week of exhausting internal business meetings last week, there was no time for sewing...any free time being used for doing the work I should have been doing if it weren't for the meetings, punctuated by little bits of sleep.

Ah, sleep. I broke out the 42-oz. down comforter last night. I have never hibernated so well!

On the upside, we had our little holiday dinner at a local microbrewery on Tuesday and got to take a tour. And drink all we wanted...which, with boss in tow and meetings the next day, wasn't much. (Sigh.)

Goose Island's best brews

The weekend was consumed by all the real life I didn't get to (because of the aforementioned meetings creating a logjam in my schedule): grocery shopping, laundry, ferrying the recycling to the neighborhood receptacle, and (most importantly) putting plastic on my windows to ward off the wicked winds...which led to the discovery that this adorable little creature, who looks so harmless, so vulnerable, so incapable of any wrongdoing...

...is a spiteful little shit.

Pardon the expression, but that about sums it up.

In my absence this week, he put his claws through not one but both sets of my not-so-cheap custom top-down/bottom-up window blinds. Because he's a vindictive little beast.

And before you give him the benefit of the doubt, I also found a picture of me that had been ripped, chewed and clawed to pieces -- which makes it very hard to believe that this isn't personal. Maybe I'd better start watching my back?

I haven't thrown in the towel with this critter just yet, but after spending thirty minutes trying ("trying" being the operative word here) to clip his claws this morning, I'm seriously questioning the choice I made in picking this particular cat.

This clipping operation requires wearing a jacket, leather gloves, jeans, and boots (you would too after he's sunk his teeth into your leg), and taking two rugs and a beach towel into the bathroom with me to try to contain the whirlwind of claws and teeth. The venture was successful, but not without a few scratches to exposed skin and the total destruction of the trust I've been trying to build with him since the last time I did this two months ago.

I'm trying to be patient -- I'm sure he was mistreated and tormented in his former life, so I'm all about trying to make his life here so much better -- but he's not making it very easy. As I tell him every day, it's a damn good thing he's cute.

So OK, busy crappy week, ungrateful pet, and no time to sew...until this afternoon. I got the Malibu Monkeys top all put together and have started to quilt it (is fusible batting the best invention or what?). It's started to grow on me!

Add to that another hopeless effort to get a handle on my kitchen, in which I purged the refrigerator of sad-looking vegetables and made soup (red cabbage, leeks, garlic, potatoes, spinach, carrots, and an onion). It actually looks halfway decent, now that I've taken an immersion blender to it. It needed a punch, so I just added some red wine, and will top it with a dollop of creme fraiche...

So all said, I guess the end of the weekend is looking up. I'm making stuff after all.

Too late to turn back now...

Not sure I like how this is turning out.

But I spent a good part of the weekend trying to get this bottom half together -- it's like assembling a puzzle -- and damned if I'm going to give up on it at this point.


It's not my best work design-wise, but it's bright and loud, two things to which I continually aspire -- and how much happier can you get than sock monkeys at the beach?

Giving thanks...

I know it's Thanksgiving, and it's probably too cliché to offer up a post like this, but I'm going to do it anyway.

I am thankful. For many things.

For instance, all I had to do for today was make red cabbage from my grandmother's recipe. And some cranberry-walnut biscotti.

I'd take a picture, but as we all know from my attempted Swiss Oatmeal illustration, I'm not the best food photographer.

I'll take a couple bottles of wine, and sautée my wild mushroon mix in garlic and Madiera once I get out to my cousin's house in the suburbs, but in contrast to the throngs of you who are spending their pre-meal hours laboring in the kitchen, I get to spend mine blogging with a cat napping peacefully on my lap, then just show up to a bustling, warm house filled with laughter, incredible smells, and a branch of the family I only get to see once a year. I get to hang out with my cousins and their college-age kids and marvel at what cool people they've grown to be. And know that I'm related to all of them.

I've been looking forward to this day for months.

And I need to interject here that two horse-drawn carriages have just passed by my window, followed by a truckload of Christmas trees. Add a little snow and it'd be perfect!

But back to the thankful part.

Beyond the usual family (immediate and extended), friends (in person and in Blogdom), health and home to be thankful for, especially in these times, in an effort to not bore you I've narrowed it down.

On this day to reflect on all I've been given, this list is long...but one keeps bobbing to the top of the list:

I am incredibly grateful for the gift of creativity.

Not everyone gets this when talents are passed out (I'm very aware of what I didn't get as a tradeoff -- math skills, the ability to drive a stick...it's a long list), and some people receive lots more than others (several fellow bloggers come to mind -- see my links at left). But we -- and I mean all of us who have the ability to make things and share pieces of ourselves with others -- are a pretty lucky bunch.

As quilters, we take bits of fabric and turn them into a big cuddly hug for someone hundreds of miles away. We pluck colors and patterns from our imagination and make them into something tangible that warms and comforts. As artists, we channel our emotions into something for others to appreciate. As writers, our words come together to share experience and encourage others. As photographers (Swiss Oatmeal aside), we inspire.

It's really pretty amazing -- and magical -- when you think about it.

So as my house fills with the wonderful smell of almost-burnt biscotti, I wish all of you "creative types" out there an amazing and magical Thanksgiving. Eat well!

Decisions, decisions...

In my zeal to get the homespun plaid quilt started (and finished), I characteristically forged ahead with all the blue plaid units and -- doh! -- totally neglected to purchase any border fabric. Or binding.

Hey, I have backing, which means I should get a little credit for thinking ahead, but I guess not much.

Long story short, I've been buying (because there's absolutely NOTHING in my stash that will work here, believe me, I dove in and came up empty) and auditioning brushed cotton all weekend (note to all, Quilt Expressions has the fastest shipping ever, the stuff shows up almost before you order it, and my western Michigan quilt shop has the most delicious Debbie Field Riverwoods flannels, it took a lot of self control to get out of there with just what I thought would work...)

Hoping for some contrast, I went in a direction I probably shouldn't have taken in the first place, but in my defense, I'm a brights girl -- all this plaid understated stuff is new to me.

The denim shot cotton from Kaffe Fassett is it. I should have known better. I was hoping to find something that would make it all sing, and, well, turns out I didn't need to. This quilt doesn't want to sing; it just wants to keep a certain someone warm all winter and not draw too much attention to itself. Especially when it, say, goes off to college. It wants to be all guy-cool.

That decision made, I start laying out the nine-patches...

...and it's just getting way too busy. Even for me. Kinda makes my head spin (or maybe that was the wine?). I had thought it might come to this -- just when I thought I might make a quilt completely from a pattern...oh well.

I was born to tweak -- it is my destiny.

Plan B: just use the inside of the top -- it makes the quilt smaller than a twin but still big enough for a throw, and use my new favorite denim blue for the binding instead.

Which raises the following concern: this loose-weave shot cotton does not, to me, appear to be the best choice for a long-life, lotsa wear binding. Even doubled, it just isn't instilling me with any confidence that it will be on the quilt for very long with regular boy-wear. So now that I at least know the color's right, I still have to find some Kona or the equivalent...unless someone out there knows something about the durability of shot cotton that I don't.

Anybody have any experience using this as binding?

Monkeys in the works...

Two charm packs. Six fat quarters. And two yards for backing. Not sure exactly what I'm going with this yet, but there's a seed of an idea sprouting very slowly...

However, we haven't had a lot of sun lately, and we had snow flurries all weekend -- not exactly the best weather for successful germination (but ideal for huddling under a quilt on the couch watching college football and movies most of the day). Maybe I need a grow light?

There's a light at the end of the tunnel...

Well, it's a year and a half late, but the 60th Anniversary quilt for my parents is back from the longarmer's and ready for binding!


She did a great job, filling most of the off-white blocks with the names of the kids and grandchildren, and rose wreaths (Dad's been growing and breeding roses for almost 50 years) for the remaining ones.

I'm so looking forward to getting this one off my plate -- and onto their bed -- by Christmas!

Busy, busy, busy...

It's been a busy week. But not necessarily with quilting, sorry. Lots of work, and all those civic duties...

Chicago was a very proud city last week. And will be for a while.

We got ourselves a President -- is it too much to hope for the Olympics, too???

Here's to not having to move the kitchen table...

I hung the leftover fleece from my kitchen cupboards and (TA-DA!) I had a big ol' design wall that -- as an added bonus -- the cat couldn't get to. Hooray for high ceilings! It worked really well...except I didn't finish everything yesterday and couldn't make coffee this morning. Or eat breakfast. So If I don't finish everything before dinner, I'm eating out.

And another bonus for the weekend, my brother and his family came in from Ann Arbor to visit his in-laws this weekend, so I got to see these guys:

Luke, who'll be 2 in two weeks

Christopher, at 6, won't look at the camera any more

We spent yesterday afternoon at the children's museum in the northern suburbs, which is a really fascinating place, but also very busy. And loud. And total kid overload for someone who doesn't have any.

I survived all the shrieking and crying and the post-Halloween candy sugar buzz (zheesh, you'd think my brother'd be over that stage by now), and lived to tell about it. But I think I'm good on my kid fix until Christmas.

I'm going to need a bigger kitchen...

It's taken a while, but it's coming together. Little by little, my faith in the original pattern is being renewed, and my tendency to run off in a different direction with it or tweak it to "make it my own" is, I'm happy to say, diminishing. Less work that way. Less thinking. Which, at this point, is a good thing, because I just need to get it done.

However, it's going to be much bigger than I anticipated, and I don't have that much floor space in my kitchen without moving things around quite a bit. So it looks like I'll be rearranging some furniture this weekend!

Acres of plaid...

Still chugging away on these. I've always been a blue & white fan, but now that I've gotten these all laid out on the floor, I believe I'm falling in love with plaid. (Plaid! Me!)

Which, as we all know, makes a project move along so much faster...

Life in the big city...

As tired as I can get of Big City life and do my best to escape from it as often as possible, there is one thing about living where I live that I would really, truly miss if I ever left. On weekend mornings, as I sit at my computer, this is what I see. And hear. And, on occasion with the wind is right, smell...

(You'll have to pardon my filthy windows. It rained last night and,
OK, I admit it: I just don't wash them very often. If ever.)

The sound of hooves on pavement as the carriages make their way from the nearby stable to the streets of the Magnificent Mile is, to me, one of the most comforting sounds I can think of. It probably goes back to an obsession with horses and a few years of riding lessons in my youth, but it's one of the reasons I fell in love with this neighborhood in the first place -- a little bit of country in the big city. Add to that the baby rabbits in my garden, the red-tailed hawk that patrols the stable grounds for rats, coyotes in Lincoln Park, and I can almost forget I'm living in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the country. (We even had a cougar venture into Roscoe Village this spring, which brings up a ton of encroachment issues and it still gets me upset to think about what happened to him that we won't go there this fine morning.)

What I'm actually looking forward to, though, is the next few weeks, when they outfit the horses with bell harnesses for the Christmas season. Which makes their late-night return to the stables almost magical.

It almost makes up for the 3am drunken bar patrons and the car alarms that go off then the El goes by...

In praise of gadgets and other stuff...

Making more progress on my homespun nine-patches this week, trying to maintain focus -- which for me is incredibly difficult. So no new quilting news to report...but I felt the need to post today, anyway.

Being relatively new to the blogosphere, I'm still exploring much of what it has to offer in the way of bells and whistles to enhance my audience's experience. It's pretty fascinating, all the stuff that's out there, and I could gadget-up my sidebar from here until next week if it weren't for my desire to keep the look of my blog relatively streamlined and clean (not sure how I'm doing on that one, but I try).

Out of curiosity I had to put up a counter (though I'm pretty sure a third of the hits are my own -- AOL doesn't seem to recognize that I'm the same user visit to visit), and just recently discovered, in all my blog-hopping, the FEEDJIT map, which I think is the coolest thing since...well, since blogs themselves.

I'm not deluding myself into thinking my audience is that big, but I find it pretty darn enchanting to find out there are folks halfway around the globe (in Israel! and Brazil! and Australia! and Spain and Norway!) reading my words from sweet home Chicago.

So I'd like to take this post to give a shout-out to what looks like a growing reader base in Kansas (most likely thanks to Jacquie, so major props to her), to devon in the office down the hall, Judy up in the 'burbs, my two loyal followers, a "how's it goin, eh?" to friends north of the border, and a big "Happy Friday!" to all of you checking in from all over the place to see where I'm bouncing next.

I love the idea of making this big ol' world a little smaller, one post at a time.

Of course, this little tool also allows me to tell who's not reading...like my sister in Winston-Salem, for instance, and my best friend for as long as I can remember Jackie in Brooklyn. Nothin' like a little global humiliation to bring you around, is there?

Anyhow...

I leave you today with one of my favorite pictures, because a post without pictures just doesn't feel post-y enough for me...

I took my parents up to northern Michigan last month for a week of R&R (mostly for me, they've been retired forever and live a life of R&R, for the most part). Married 61 years this past June, and they're still holding hands. Not many people can say that. Makes me feel like a very lucky girl.



P.S. Thanks also for all your comments -- under the tutelage of StephanieD (who, by the way, is up to some major Halloween ghoulishness), I'm working on my blogging etiquette and trying to respond to all of them from now on.

Another little diversion...

I spent most of Saturday making plaid nine-patches. Which was productive, but quite frankly, tedious.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the project (it's perfect for its recipient!), and I'm enthusiastic about making progress...but there's something so much more liberating about cutting loose and not following a pattern.

I'm a youngest child -- and while I never considered it would have a huge impact on my crafting, could it be that the streak of rebellion bestowed upon me by my birth order is now manifesting itself in creative spontaneity and eschewing others' directions? Hmmm...

I tried doing a little hand quilting to mix it up a little, but sadly had to temporarily abandon my efforts due to my little orange friend, who couldn't seem to stay away from the project whenever I picked it up. It sounds like a weak excuse, I know (and poor animal training on my part), but there is something about this particular project that has him entranced -- except for rearranging blocks on the floor, he doesn't pay attention to anything else I have in the works, pin-basted, hanging threads or otherwise. I'd sit back on the sofa to start quilting, and Archie would literally jump into the middle of the frame and either settle down for a nap or start chewing on safety pins. I'm admitting defeat (again, only temporarily) -- but hand quilting, I think, will have to wait until he's a little older and not as curious. The quilt is already basted, so it can be easily machine quilted, anyway (sigh).

Which brings me to a machine update:
I called the shop before I left last weekend and explained my situation. Turns out their tech is on vacation and they aren't taking any machines in until November -- and then she assured me I still had a window of time before I drove my 440 completely into the ground without servicing. I'm still a little leery, given how much use it's getting pre-Christmas -- anybody else have any experience with this, or are you all totally on top of things and take care of your machines right away and I'm just a big loser?

Anyhow...in the interest of giving my overworked machine a rest yet still satisfying a need to play with fabric, came up with these cute little things:


I should have put something up for size reference -- they're just under 3" tall and totally adorable! The takeout from Friday night's dinner wasn't that great, but the fortune cookie box was too cute to resist and proved to be a great template!

The possibilities, methinks, are endless. These could be addictive!


P.S. In response to all the warnings I got last week about cats and sewing notions, my house is now kitty-proofed. I just have to find someplace more convenient to keep my pincushion than in the cupboard above the sink!

This is going to take a long time...

OK, this is going to be more difficult than I anticipated. Not the quilting part, I'm liking that, though I have to work on getting my stitches even on the front as well as the back. Fortunately, the backing I'm using is a busy print, so it hides my novice attempts pretty well.

No, it's the trying to accomplish this with an inquisitive kitten in the house part...I hadn't factored in Archie's curiosity, and newly-discovered love of thimbles...

and safety pins...

and thread, which he's been trying to eat. Wet thread isn't very easy to quilt with!

...and then there's worrying about where the needle is when he gets a hold of it.

If he's not on top of the quilt, he's underneath it, pawing at my hands. Not quite sure why he's so fascinated -- I don't think it's an attention thing, because he could pretty much care less about me except when he's about to get fed.

I am getting so little done!