Quilting with Friends

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This morning I was quilting the Gardener's Journal quilt. Eliza and I were having a good old time. And then, as I reached for my scissors to cut some thread ends, I somehow miraculously managed to catch the hand embroidery with the blade while simultaneously cutting. And, snip! Just like that. Crrrap!

Now...congratulate me for my restraint because I didn't say anything worse than that. After all, furry children were present.

But I'm here to tell you that I couldn't do that again if someone paid me a million dollars and gave me three years in which to do it. (Although, for a million dollars, I'd be willing to try.) Anyway...what to do? I tugged at the end a little to see how much was going to come loose. It seemed just the top two leaves were going to give me trouble, and so I just buried the thread ends the way I bury the thread ends when I'm quilting.

It was a little tricky doing those two lazy daisy stitches when I couldn't go through to the back of the fabric, but I got 'er done...to my supreme surprise.

There. Good as new.

"So...whatcha doin?"

"I can purrobably help with this."

"Let me check and see what kinds of purroblems you're having."

"Well, fur one thing, your tension needs adjustment."

"Here...let me just take care of that."

He was quite interested in how the machine was threaded, and that take-up lever had him mystified. Then it gave him a nice little "thwack" on his chinny-chin-chin.

That set him back some. We had a good long talk about keeping paws out from under the needle.

I've taken kind of a long break from this because I haven't been sure what to do with this block. I started by quilting some sort of wood grain stuff into the trunk of the tree.

I put some grass under her feet, and did a tiny stipple on the dog to give him some fur. Then I did a sort of floral motif in her dress, thinking it would be as if she were wearing a dress with a large floral print. 

"How are you going to quilt the cat? You might want to put your glasses on furst."

Smitty is ever so helpful. I gave the cat some stripes, although they're hard to see here. Then, I really didn't know what to do with the tree, so I gave it this weeping willow sort of thing.

I put some cross-hatching in her hat and in the basket, and then I quilted a little wood grain swirl on the table top. Then I tried a sort of chevron around the border. That went a little better than expected. I kind of like that motif. It can be stacked close together to make a Christmas tree. And then I called it good.

Then I moved onto the bird bath, which was equally vexing. I decided to make the birds splash some water, and I stippled a little bit in the water itself to give it some waves. Then I did a little vine around the stand.

I filled in quite a bit of the little patchwork today too, and by that time, I was getting kind of tired of the whole thing. 

Also today I've been going through the process of making labels for two of my quilts. I'm using the Bubble Jet Set stuff I blogged about a while back. It makes the inks in my ink jet printer waterproof. It isn't a difficult process, but it does take some time for the fabric to dry. Anyway...I had two 5 x 7 labels ready to print. The first one jammed in the printer, which gave me quite a scare. That was my fault because I hadn't remembered to narrow the paper guides when I loaded it into the printer. So, I got that all taken care of, but ruined one of my two labels in the process. Now I'm back to treating more fabric with the Bubble Jet stuff. When that dries, I can make my second label.

Nevertheless, I did get a label made for the Blooming Sunflower quilt. Aside from printing them on my ink jet printer, I'm doing them a little differently than I usually do. I decided to fuse them to the quilt, as I've done with this one:

That would probably be enough in most cases because the fusing medium will prevent any fraying. This one is being entered into a show, however, and I don't want that label to be easily removed. In this case, I'm going to blanket stitch around it with some gold embroidery floss. It'll look better, and it will require scissors to remove it.

So that's all I've done today. I was thinking I might make some fudge, but then I got so involved with the quilting that the whole morning and part of the afternoon got away from me. It is ever thus.