Peaceful Easy Feeling and some Eye Candy

Help me decide on a case for my new phone.

See the choices right here.

Last night, I went to bed ready to push the panic button about everything I have to do today.

I need to make lunch to celebrate Erik's birthday on Saturday, which consists of two salads, pulled chicken filling for sandwiches, and baking a cake. Also, my monthly pedicure was rescheduled for today, and I have to go to physical therapy. I need to leave this morning at about 11:15 and I won't get home again until around 3:30. I was tallying up the hours I need against the hours I have (which is never a good idea), and I found myself feeling a little overwhelmed.

But now, it's 8:30 a.m. as I sit down to write this. My chicken filling is in the crockpot. I'll deal with that when I get home this afternoon. My potato salad is finished and in the refrigerator. I fried bacon and hard boiled some eggs for my 7-Layer Salad that I'll finish this afternoon, and I still have all morning tomorrow to bake the cake. (Polishes fingernails on shirt.) So now I'm feeling pretty darned spunky and ready to face the next two days with a big smile. (Heaves heavy sigh of relief.)

All of that to say that I haven't had any time to sew, and I probably won't have any time before Sunday. That's okay though because I got a megadose of quilting at the MQX Quilt show yesterday, and I have some pictures for you. I'll start by saying that I'm pretty exasperated with my camera. I left home with a full charge on the battery, but it went dead after taking about 20 pictures. That was pretty disappointing, not to mention disconcerting. Mike thinks the battery may have a short and that it is discharging just sitting in the camera. Fortunately, I have other batteries, but I didn't have any spares with me yesterday. That means I was taking pictures with my iPhone, and I really dislike the quality of the images. In any case, I'll show you what I have.

These were a few of my favorite quilts. I don't have a lot to say about them, but I'll add in little comments if I just can't keep my mouth shut. This first quilt won best of show, and it's easy to see why. The quilting was amazing. For most of these I'll put the card before the quilt so you can read what the quilter had to say about it.

Before I go on, I just want to say that the quilting in this show was over-represented with feathering, in my humble opinion. So many of the quilts were in traditional designs and quilted with lots of feathers. While the quilting and the piecing was fabulous, I found myself feeling as if I was seeing the same quilt over and over again. After a while, I was on the lookout for quilts that were unique and different. I think you'll see that reflected in these images.

Pay attention to the red tie in this quilt. It ties itself as it moves from left to right.

I liked this next quilt because it was different, but also because I was interested in how she had handled the reflection in the sunglasses. She printed the image on what I'm assuming is something like Printed Treasures.

This next image is the next door I want to make for my Doors of Ireland quilt. If you look in the window to the right, you can see my reflection in the glass. I've been considering how to capture that when I make the quilt block, and the quilt above gave me an idea how to do it. What I don't know now is how to make it the right size without wasting lots and lots of those fabric sheets.

I thought the next quilt was just too cute.

I love how this quilter quilted the wrinkles in the elephant's skin.

This next one is truly unique. It's all thread painted. How many miles of thread do you think it took to do this?

The gears were actual gears from watches.

The next quilt was quited by an 11-year-old! (Gasp!) I'd love to see what she's doing 30-40 years from now.

This gave me some ideas for how to quilt my Vintage Miniature Sewing Machines quilt.

I forgot to take a picture of the card associated with this next quilt, but I loved the details. It was inspired by bears in Yellowstone National Park.

I love how she quilted Ursa Major into the sky. Very clever.

These next several images are of quilting designs I liked. The pictures of the whole quilt were simply too poor to bother posting, but you can enjoy the quilting anyway.

I included this one because I have this quilt on my to-do list, and I liked how it was quilted.

I'm working up the nerve to quilt the white trees quilt next week. I wanted to quilt some snowflakes, and I had in mind a way to do it, but then I saw this, and I really liked it. I might incorporate a similar design.

I liked this "hounds tooth" pattern.

Another idea for my white trees quilt.

And that's all I have from the quilt show.

And now...I'm continuing on with my NP4 protest, which I really hope will be coming to a close soon. It seems those nuts in Washington were cracking yesterday evening. Something about opinion polls that were the worst in history. Not a bit surprising. Anyway...this image is from the Painted Hills unit of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in my home state of Oregon.

And with that, I'm off to get on with the rest of my busy day. Enjoy your Friday!