A weekend of accomplishments

Oh, how I loved my three days off. Unfortunately, not a spare minute to post or read blogs.

Friday, I worked on the hex quilt a lot and then put a sleeve on this quilt. This is the UFO I finished Friday morning. I named the quilt Apple Pie, but it's from a class called Not Your Mother's Sampler. Okay, so there's always a story to my quilts. This one was made in the first class I ever took and stuck with. (I took one before and only went to one of the meetings.) But, this one I persevered. It was supposed to be an advanced beginners, but most of the quilters were really beginners.

Anyway, this quilt has probably 3000 yards of quilting thread in it. Maybe more. And, you can't see a bit of it. I was too timid to use a slightly different shade of thread and all that beautiful quilting is invisible.



There are apples and baskets and flowers and tree branches, laden with fruit and flowers and leaves. The thing is stiff with quilting. And, you can't see a bit of it. For example, in the picture below, that red triangle has a basket of apples, and flowers and branches and leaves quilted in it. The pattern was specifically designed and drawn to fill this space. But, you can't see it.



And, that's why I hated this UFO and it hung in the closet for over a year, needing just one hour of additional quilting to be finished. Well, that and it needed a sleeve.

On Saturday, I took last year's cmas quilt, you'll see it later, and I fixed the binding and got the sleeve on. When I finished it last year, the binding was a disaster. It was my first attempt to machine bind and it was the biggest mess. I finally just used needle and thread and whipped the binding to the back with long stitches to make it look okay. Saturday, I took that binding off, re-ironed it and put it back on and got all the finger work done on the back and got the sleeve on it. Now, I just need to remove the embellishments and wash and block it to hang during the holidays.

And, yesterday, I did most of the binding on the triple irish chain Leaders and Enders quilt. It is my first successful machine binding. I've sewn the binding to the back and sewn down one side to the front and will be turning the first corner tonight or in the morning. I'm very excited. This will make all the difference in making a bed sized quilt because it will make the binding process much easier.

But, that wasn't even the main event for the weekend. Okay, the main event was resting and relaxing. But, the main job was window screens. When I moved into the house 11 years ago, most of the windows didn't have screens in them. There were 3 and 2 more had frames that the screen had been pulled from. Other than that, we opened the windows at our own peril. So, over the last two weekends, I've been making screens, preparing us for the fall and winter, when we can actually open up the house. I have one window to go and next weekend, need to start taking down the wood screen doors, pull the screens, repaint, and then put them back up.

Chores are apparently never done.

Anyway, I like this whole taking them a little at a time and spreading the work. Not so good for getting anything done, but it makes what I do get done more pleasant.

We only had about 6 treaters last night. I think Sydney was a little disappointed. But, I didn't mind. My job was to sit in the floor with the dog tied to my leg so she couldn't bark at and run after small children. Halloween on a Sunday is always slow at our house; I guess everybody goes to a party.

Take care and have a great Monday. Lane