OMG: It's FINISHED!!

So, I have this theory about the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. Just possibly it's the planet's way of shooting off fireworks in celebration of the finish of Quiltmaker's Garden. It's possible, right? So, here we go...pictures of this most recalcitrant quilt project of all time. Yesterday morning, I rounded the fourth corner...

From there it was a sprint to the finish, and it was done. It's a large quilt at 72 x 94 inches...large enough for a twin size bed. To take pictures of a quilt this large, one needs a quilt holder-upper with a wide enough wing span. My quilt holder-upper has long arms, but not quite long enough. And so, I resorted to this method I've used before, standing on a bar stool and leaning out over the top of the quilt, using the ceiling to balance myself. It's a two-step process: first, stepping onto a little step stool and then up onto the bar stool (made of straw, if you must know). Scary, huh? I had it in my head that it was the quilt's last chance to stick it to me if I were to fall from my perch and break an arm or something. (That's a cat toy hanging from the rungs of the stool.)

It was a foolish risk, but these are the things we do for our art. So here's the cropped version of that image above.

And this being my May OMG, I'll be linking up there as soon as I publish this post.

After that, I headed into the sewing room to make the May block for Tuxedo Tales. But first, I wanted to sew one of my custom labels onto the Santa's Village quilt finished a while ago. I'd almost forgotten about these little labels, so sparse have been my finishes lately. I just stitched around the edge with invisible thread.

It looks okay from the front.

Quiltmaker's Garden will get a label too, but I'll have to make one for that, and I'll have to attach a hanging sleeve. It's going to be entered in this year's Oregon State Fair, and so the label needs more information than my custom labels provide.

But back to Tuxedo's Tales. This is the block I was making. The pattern is from Bonnie Sullivan.

When I had all the fusing finished, it looked like this. The buttons were just lying there, not sewn on yet.

Then I was able to get the top-stitching and machine embroidery done. Sometimes I do hand-embroidery on these blocks, but for this one, I did it all by machine.

The lace below the collar was done with one of my machine's fancy stitches. It doesn't show up on the cat fabric as well as I'd hoped, but it's good enough. Also, as I posted this image, I realized I need to add the button at the collar. I'll do that today.

There are some life tasks to take care of today. This weekend will be our family weekend get-together. If you've been reading along for a while, then you might recall that out family gets together for a weekend each year in lieu of exchanging gifts at Christmas. This year, we'll be staying on a houseboat in Oregon City. Oregon City is essentially a suburb of Portland, but on the east side of town and the other side of the Willamette River. We're all looking forward to that, but it means preparing some food. I'm going to make a lasagna, and so I need to pick up a few things for that along with some other grocery items. There are some other errands to run in town as well.

Also for this weekend, I'm going to bake some breads. I've been keeping my white starter fed and readying it for baking. When I fed it yesterday, it looked like this 20 minutes later. Obviously, it's feeling very robust and antsy to get itself into the bread-rising game.

I was never a good student of chemistry...mostly because I didn't like doing homework...but I find this whole yeast thing endlessly fascinating. Maybe it isn't even chemistry...maybe it's biology. Whatever. The little critters responsible for this bubbling action are like pets, although they will never replace kitties for night time snuggles. The baking I have planned is a three-day process, and so I'll get those started today for baking on Friday. If there's time, I'll get back to the flamingos this afternoon. For now, it's time to get back to slow-stitching on Friendship's Garden.

As a follow-up to this whole Blogger email notification issue, I received this email last night:

Thanks for posting in the Blogger Help Forum!

We're currently tweaking our emailing system, but we expect it to be working again within the next week. Thank you for your patience - we look forward to getting it out soon!

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Ricky

And to that I say, thank you, Ricky. Now please get back to work! Until then, I'll continue to leave myself love messages so that I can receive notification of any comments y'all want to leave. And, thank you.