Booty, Loot, and Stuff, for ME!

Saturday was promising to be a good day. Weather lovely, no big jobs to do - everyone happy. I had cleared out my sewing room enough to open up the back of my sewing table, in preparation for machine quilting. Then, Fons and Porter/Love of Quilting was on the TV, not a re-run, and (ta-ta-ta!) I was in charge of both the remote control AND the Lazy Boy.

Around noonish I put gas in my car, and was pleased the price/gallon had dropped a few cents more. Nice day, feeling good, zipped through the Dairy Queen for a 'feel-good' ice cream cone. Happiness and life is often made up of small pleasurable bits, isn't it?

When I arrived home, this mail what was waiting for me ... The box is from Patti of Quilting is my Passion for being the 50th person to comment to her post of July 14. And look at all this good stuff! A darling little Mary Engelbright tin sewing box, LOTS of fabric and a whole package of beautiful fallish FQs, a table-runner pattern, a bag of really sinfully sexy chocolates - which is not shown because I asked DH to hide it and dole them out to me one at a time. I am weak, I admit. Oh Patti, this is just too wonderful - thank you so much.

But wait, there's more. I also received my DVD from the Pajama Quilter but have not been able to watch it, because I've been busy looking for that bag of sinfully sexy chocolates.

I'm making preparations to machine quilt my first Kaleidoscope - the one that is pretty wild. It's larger than the last one posted. Pushing, mashing, pulling a quilt through the harp in my machine, even though it's a generous 10 inches, is still tedious and not simple, so this time I decided to experiment. After sandwiching, spraying and pinning the quilt, I loaded water soluble thread on top and bobbin and ran huge basting stitches (dogs down) on the quilt, from side to side. Maybe this is pointless, but I WAS able to get the pins out and didn't have to worry about hitting them, and I feel the quilt is more stable with the basting. The spool of dissolving thread is only 300 yards, and was $6.95, and I had leftover thread.

One issue I am having is that my quilting thread is light in some areas, looking a lot like the basting thread, so I really have to concentrate - it's easy to lose my way with machine quilting this method, when my eyes are so close to the stitches. You can see the vertical stitches which are the soluble thread. It simply melts when doused with water. And, as I said, it's an experiment. Also, my machine quilting thread is different than the last very nice one and does not 'lay in the fabric' as nicely.

And lastly, one of the frequent visitors to our deck, looking lovely and fine, with stunning colored plumage.