Finally

After staring at my quilt top for about 4 months, I finally made a decision on how to quilt the sky background. I was so nervous to do it thinking that I might ruin it, and in the end it's definitely not perfect, but I love the texture that it gives it. I shouldn't have waited so long. I used invisible thread on top, aka monofilament, and a cotton thread in the bobbin, put my feed dogs down and just went for it. Next time I won't wait so long, but half my problem with machine quilting is just deciding what design to quilt.  There's so many great ideas out there.

Good decision

I bought these chairs this summer, put them in what we call the "piano room". It's a place to sit and listen to music, read or even just to sit barefoot in order to feel the cool shag rug under your feet.  I love these chairs. 

 I love the colors. I discovered that a little purple in a room makes it cheery, fun and a bit unexpected. The fun 60's shag rug has become a family favorite. Even the dogs thank me regularly for this addition to the room. They also like to come into the room to listen to music, nap or roll around on it dreaming they have their very own personal alpaca.

 Whenever I walk by the room, it makes me smile.  I think to myself, "that was a good decision to buy those chairs."

The lucky thing was that when I put them in the room, I realized the little lamp that had been in the room all along, a lamp my husband and I loved and purchased when we were just young newlyweds, had the exact same colors in it. It was like I had purchased the chairs on purpose, like I actually knew what I was doing when it came to interior decorating (which couldn't be further from the truth). It's also now the perfect spot to sit in when I hand sew bindings on my quilts.  A good decision indeed.

Back from Seattle, back to UFO's

Walking through the streets of Seattle, I turn the corner and see walls and walls of these old sewing machines. The store is AllSaints Spitalfields, a rather high end clothing store.  They have a lot of stores in the UK and now in the US. What I loved, of course, were the sewing machines.  Even the inside of the store used the machines as art. I think each one of their stores uses these machines as decor.  I can't imagine how many they must have acquired in total. If they ever decide to change their decor, I hope I'm in town and get first dibs on the machines.

We stayed in Kingston and within walking distance was a fun quilt store, The Kingston Quilt store.  I picked up a pattern by Barbara Brandeburg.  The quilt was hanging in the store and it was made with beautiful fabric.  I'm going to have to search for that exact fabric.

In the UFO department, I've got my flickr group quilt blocks up on my design wall.  I need to look at them for a while to decide how to put them together, whether to add a sashing between them and if a sashing, what material.  Right now I'm leaning toward adding a sashing that is black dots on a white background. Black and white checkers may be cute too.

I've also finished the backing for this quilt top below.

 

My girls like the backing almost better than the top, so that will be nice to have a twin size quilt that I can use both sides of. Obviously there's plenty of quilting projects to be started, added to and finished.  I love having quilts in every stage of the process for that very reason.