My apologies...

...to all those who took Jacquie's advice and came over to my "funny" blog, only to find postings about a dead/dying cat. The timing wasn't exactly the best.

There was a bright, quilting-related spot in my rather dark yesterday: I finally got to meet Simona, who at 15 months didn't sit still long enough to get any really good pictures with her present. Suffice it to say she loved her quilt, but I think she liked the box it came in even better. Ain't that always the way?

I got a better close-up of the quilting. The black squares were my first foray into free-motion with my new BSR, and I'm pretty happy with the way it looks. I was trying for a little whimsy to break up the lines, and I think/hope it worked...

OK, anybody know why some pictures will enlarge when you click on them, and some won't? It seems pretty random, and I'm not sure what I'm doing to make/not make this happen. Any hints would be appreciated.

When done is still unfinished...

I was getting this quilt ready to wrap up and give to its 16-month old recipient (which, in my house, amounts to making sure there's no cat hair left on it) when I stepped back, took a good look, and decided there wasn't enough quilting on it. I loved the look of the Minkee sashing without any stitching through it, but let's face it, it's going to a toddler and needs to be relatively indestructible.

So it was back to the machine...and I made a fun discovery: if you hold down the reverse button long enough on my machine (Bernina 440QE), it stays in reverse! I was doing a little funky straight-line pattern in the white blocks, and this eliminated having to pull the bulk of the quilt through the arm of the machine over and over again. Of course, I discovered it by accident and had to rip out the stitching that went in the wrong direction, but hey -- better late than never!

Did they teach that in Mastery Classes? I'm sure I would have remembered...

Anyway, I finished the last stitching this morning before I left for work, will de-hair once again tonight, and deliver it later this week to little Simona so she can put it to good use! Yay! Another project one out the door!