Quiltapalooza

So you're probably wondering what I've been doing?  Up to my ass in alligators...and other creatures.

COUGARS!  Very blurry photo of Judy J's Cougar quilt. This is a rush order, so I had to bump a couple quilts in line to get it done quickly for her.  She gave me the shimmery red thread to use on the top and the poly wine-colored variegated thread for the back.  I gotta say, I still don't like the metallic threads.  It broke several times before I got the speed and tension adjusted, and in the end, it still looked sub-par on the back.  I think I need to say no more to metallic threads.  Grrr!

PENGUINS!  Or a sideways picture of penguins.  This is something from my mother-in-law, and I think it will be going to another grandson who loves the antarctic creatures.  I love the color combinations on this quilt--the blues and oranges bring out the ice, water and beaks from that otherwise bleak colors on that side of the planet. I really love the horizontal stripes that separate the rows.

MYSTERY ANIMAL!  OK, there's no animal in this quilt.  This is Violet & Joy's small scrappy quilt.  This is another original Joy design where she takes a bunch of blocks and arranges them in a unique way.  She really has a great eye for design...someday you may see her name on some books and featured on some quilting show or at Houston!

SOCCER HOOLIGANS!  Went on a mid-week date night with Kelly to the Sounders game!  It was Sounders Beanie night, so everyone who attended got a stripey winter cap to wear on the cool fall night.  Most fans already have the scarves...so what's next--mittens?  Fellow ticket holder, Daniel, is away on a business trip (in Hawaii!!), so I got to be Daniel yesterday.  My first duty was to complain loudly about the cost of beverages at the stadium... "$45 for a Coke Zero!  Criminals!"  The game was frustrating--the ref that evening was Seattle's Greatest Soccer Villain, hated by Sounders fans.  Two yellow cards to a single player in a game means the player is thrown out of the game and can't be replaced--so the team plays a man short.  The game ended 0-0 with a number of angry fans chanting "Salazar sucks!"  The coach also had some scathing remarks for the cameras at half time that may end up costing him a hefty fine.

Today was a "slow" day.  Other than the usual driving the kids back and forth to school, I also did three loads of laundry, a load of dishes, mopped the kitchen floor, and sterilized all the nebulizer equipment.  THEN I got to play with fabric!  I had the 81 9-patches from scraps in my bins...and that was just a small fraction of the scraps that I have saved up.  I had cut up dark blue sashing strips, but after I had sliced up yards of fabric, I realized that I was short on fabric--not enough to do the outside sashing, and of course, the fabric I started chopping up is from quite a few years ago, so no one carries it anymore.  I'll have to substitute another fabric for the outside sashing, but it's blue-black, so just about anything will match.  After the borders, it should be 104" square--king size.  Now that I think about it, I could probably make two twin quilts instead.  With 35 blocks each, with sashing and borders, they would measure 62 x 83.

Kelly is playing some guitar playing game--the kind where you use a REAL guitar, not one with push buttons on it.  He started with a song by the Cure--"Boys Don't Cry"--and played it until I was sick of the song.  Now he's playing "I can't get no Satisfaction".  I have never, never liked that song.  The guitar rift is so monotonous!  Hopefully he'll bore of the song quickly and put me out of my misery.