No photos today

No photos today. I'm starting to pack for a three day quilting retreat. I've never been on one and I'm very excited! I hope to have lots of photos to share with you when I get back Sunday night.

In cancer news, I'm going to the surgeon this morning for a consultation. I hope to have an idea of what my treatment will be after the appointment. However, I go straight from there to school (for Molly's ballet) and then to work, so I won't have much time to think about it. Tomorrow morning, I will take Molly to school, then pick up Amy to go to the retreat.

In dog news, I never did get around to telling you about Snickers's escape. She managed to get out one morning (a Monday). She was picked up by someone who lives in our neighborhood, and was kept in their yard for the day. She didn't have her tags on because she was wearing her Bite Not collar because she's had a lot of itching due to allergies. Anyway, she managed to escape their yard, too, and was found wandering Hungary Road the next morning by some other people in our neighborhood. They took her to a vet's office and then found my listing on Craig's List. So we got our 14 year old friend back. She had some gastrointestinal issues for a couple of weeks (which required two steam cleaner rentals). Recently, we discovered fleas on her and the cat. We must have fallen behind on applying FrontLine to the dog. So, we've FrontLined the dog and put something similar on the cat. They don't seem to be horribly bad, but I noticed bites on Molly's legs. I sure hope we can get rid of them. I've felt itchy ever since this discovery. Any ideas?

Oh, and Brittany loved her quilt!

Addicted to deadlines

I have a problem. I can't seem to get things done (quilting-wise, anyway) unless I have a deadline. Case in point, Brittany's quilt. I missed her graduation because I knew she didn't need the quilt until she went to college. Then, before September, I had a bunch of deadlines at work -- samples for a gift fair, class samples, etc. "Oh well," I thought, "it won't get cold in Texas for a while anyway." I worked on her quilt and had it 99% finished, and I found a flaw that I wasn't sure how to fix (I discovered a seam that had not been sewn together properly, but the quilt was all quilted). So I put it off. Then Halloween (and the associated costume) was looming. And then we lost the dog and I got cancer and things went all to hell.Front and back

I'm ready to mail it. I haven't trimmed all the threads and I haven't washed it (because I don't have a front-loader), but I'm sending it anyway. I'm so sorry, Brittany, that you had to wait this long.
How it looks on a bed.

Does anyone else have this problem? How do you get through it? I feel pretty shitty about it.
Obligatory Molly pose.

Brittany's quilt

I'm making some real progress on my niece Brittany's graduation quilt. What? Yeah, so graduation was a few months ago. I know. But in quilting time, I'm doing fine. Early, even!

Here I am working away at the quilting, at the shop with Amy. I had to buy new gloves because I left mine at home.
Here is the back. I love the back, maybe even more than the front! I know, it's a lot of white, but I've really been drawn to this look lately. And Brittany's a responsible kid. She'll take good care of it. You can see my loopy quilting on the right side. This is the biggest quilt I've quilted so far, so I wanted to use my most comfortable fill pattern. The label is near the top right, at the end of one of the strips of blocks. These were the leftovers from the front squares.
And here is the label. I embroidered it myself. I've decided I love embroidering labels. This is the wave of the future for me, I think. The metal you see in the "with" is from a safety pin on the front. It will be gone when I'm done quilting it.Today it was over 90 degrees so I contend that it's still summer.

Graduation/College quilt

I'm so sorry I've been bad about posting. Last week was spring break and we went to DC for a few days and somehow this four day vacation took three days of planning ahead of time! Anyway. I'm working on a few projects and might have a finished one to show you in the next few days. In the meantime, here are some blocks on a design wall to show what the quilt for my niece will look like. She's graduating from high school this year. I hope to get it to her before college starts! She picked out almost all the fabrics herself. They're mostly very large prints, so these are just going to be 8 inch finished squares. The photos here doesn't really do the colors justice. The whole thing is much airier looking in reality. Not sure how to quilt it, though. Any suggestions? It will be a twin.

Class sample and new fabric

So, I was teaching a class on Friday night. It's part of a series that helps people use up piles and piles of scraps. There are cutting sessions for cutting perpetually breeding scraps into usable pieces, and there are several upcoming project classes for actually using the pieces. Friday was a cutting session and tomorrow (Sunday) is the first of the project classes. So when I was in the shop Friday night, Joyce (boss lady) and I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to have something put together for the next project class by tomorrow's class so I can drum up interest and get people to sign up. So, I whipped up this sample today — the whole thing is done. Quilted, bound, everything. Yes, it's just a placemat, but still, it's quilted! And bound! Okay, fine, it's flip and sew, but did I mention it's bound?

In other news, my fabulous step-niece (that's an accurate term, right?) is graduating from high school this June and she has asked me to make a quilt for her. She picked out most of this spectacular array of fabric. (If you're following this from facebook, you may have seen some of the exchange.) It's just going to be large squares, but I think it might be really cool. I was skeptical as I was starting to gather these fabrics together, but the more I look at them, the more I think this might be very cool. I probably won't start on the quilt for a couple of months — certainly not until I am done with the auction quilt — but I'll be posting progress.