Life...and Death

We were privileged to have a weekend with family starting on Friday afternoon. Life is precious and surrounding yourself with family and friends who love you is important. 

A fun lunch

Beautiful autumn day

And then Monday comes and I learn about a fellow Handi Quilter Inspiration Squad member who passed away last night. That's two from our small group in five years. Both from cancer. Both too young!

Wrap yourself around splendors and good things. Cherish each and every moment. Be thankful every morning when you awake somebody isn't hurting because you have left this earth. Overlook the small things and embrace them instead. 

RIP Scott Hayes for you shall be missed dearly. 

No Snow

Well, as usual, the weatherman was incorrect. We never received any snow yesterday; just rain.

Here's some quilting detail of what's going into the Tilda Cats for Debby... 

Wool gives so much texture!

This piece is taking way longer than I expected it to. It's not that big of a quilt, but there are a LOT of starts and stops in here and a lot of ditch work. Ditch work is very (very) time consuming. I'll continue on with this today on Bernie.

Here's what's on DW until further notice...

Martha's Fall Splendor

Once again, the pics don't do the color justice. I say it's on DW until further notice because I'm waiting for the black batting I ordered to arrive. Hopefully it won't be too long but my supplier is having trouble keeping the Dream battings in stock. Probably because they're the best. 

We had a very hard rain last night and it was our very first hard [storm] rain since we've put the roof on. Where the roof meets the slope of the existing soffit on the east end we had some leakage. Just a small amount, but that has to be addressed and pronto!

More rain this morning and then it's supposed to get a little warm (70's) for a few hours late this afternoon. We'll see how much the weatherman lies this time. Either way, it's good quilting weather. And how about this view?

What a view!

Happy Monday

Talk about a totally unproductive studio weekend. And there wasn't any specific reason why, just a lot of little things; errands, autumn chores, planting spring bulbs, getting the boat out of the water, visiting mom. 

Today is another fall-like weather day and now that the house is cleaned up from our weekend work I can spend the rest of the day with some jazz playing in the background while on the long arm. 

I have to take advantage of today because I may or may not be here tomorrow. Jims last follow-up ankle appointment is late in the morning and that's a whole day out of our lives when we go there. 

A look out my window while I work today...

What's left of our very quick fall colors

That maple tree to the left is usually absolutely beautiful, but the drought spring, the less rainfall summer, and the warm autumn weather kept it from becoming too colorful this year. However, the little maple tree next to it is making up for some of that lost color. 

Nova Star Day #1

I have designed about 17 motifs to work into the individual blocks. Then ruler work into each of the sashing pieces. This is what it's looking like so far.

Nova Star Quilting

There will be duplicate quilting in 13 blocks, which gives me a variety to work from and makes the quilting not as boring. There's nothing worse than having to repeat the quilting over and over and over again. Especially on a larger quilt like this one. 

Once customers were received and long arming was done for the day (1/3 completed), I was able to get the next set of strips onto the Addresses blocks and get them squared up. They are getting too big to have them all fit onto the design wall, so here they are waiting for their next round of strips. 

Addresses blocks waiting for the next step

We had a thunderstorm last night and it brought some high winds and rain with it, but our little Maples are hanging on for another few days. The temps also dropped making the lake steam this morning with the rising sun.

Good morning Smallwood Lake

And the view today will be spectacular as I work in the studio from heaven!

My view today

Ha Hah!

The phone rang this morning with a new unrecognized number. Hmmm?? Against my better judgement, I answered the thing. Oh, thank goodness, it was my new customer who hadn't been logged into my contacts. Whew.

Because...

I started this on the long arm. Yes, I know. I was doing this on the sit down. But the throat space on the sit down is not stellar and with the two layers of batting, it was creating a lot of drag. I wasn't having fun. 

Now I'm having a riot. It gives me the ability to learn new stitch patterns I didn't want to experiment on with customer quilts, and I'm able to densely quilt this and do some creative work customers don't generally want to pay for. 

These Dream Big panels are so freeing and so not in-the-box. I don't think I could/would ever tire working on them.

And I couldn't ask for a better environment to work in. Look at the view I have today. This will only last a few short weeks, so I work in here as much as possible during that time, despite the weather being awfully nice the past few days. 

My autumn studio view

More Dream Big work this morning and then off to the dentist after lunch. The asphalt guys are supposed to be here sometime today to get that pad laid off the back walk/garage area. The customers will appreciate it and I know I certainly will. Tonight I'll continue with my little addresses blocks.

It's not Friday

My girlfriend, Katie, commented yesterday on everybody posting on Friday. Well, it's not Friday.

The t-shirt quilt is done. The 100 Blocks is loaded and three rows were completed yesterday.

Just before loading

Let's talk Jacqueline de Jonge. She is an amazing quilt designer and her tops are NOT for the faint at heart. In the quilting world, completing one of her beautiful creations is like a quilters Everest conquer.

I purchased one of her patterns about three years ago. It took me this long to start the project.

A mountain to climb

This is a full-size top; 80x80. See the little circle in the center? It took me about four hours last night to figure out what to do on that.

The first of many

But isn't it gorgeous? I have cut the fabrics for the next circle behind this one and hope to piece them today. The directions for this quilt top isn't just a few pages; 32 to be exact. And you read and re-read the directions about a dozen times before moving along to the next step.

16 of 24 total colors used in this piece

And what a beautiful day to work in the studio. As you can see from the pics, the sun is shining (for now), and I don't have to be into work until 5:00 tonight, so the whole day is mine to play as desired.

We had a killer freeze last night and the leaves are falling quickly now. This will probably be the last pic of the wonderful autumn view from the studio windows.

Saying goodbye to our warmer months