My Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker...

Today I got a call from the nurse at Jeff's school to pick him up.....he'd gone jaundiced. His eye whites were yellow, and so was his skin. Very strange to see...

His doc's office is closed on friday afternoons so i had to go down to the urgent care at the medical center. Doc-in-a-box. FUN! NOT!

Hours waiting...HOURS! Mostly waiting for the doc....then waiting for the blood to be drawn....then waiting for the results of the tests...

Looks like Jeff has mono... :c/ I have to take him back on monday for more blood work to compare to what they did today.

Then through talking to the doc, I told him about all *my* fatigue the past couple months and how I just can't get with it. He ordered blood work for me too. He's checking for mono because of Jeff...(yes, it is contagious) and then since we were drawing blood anyway, to check my thyroid and also rule out anemia as well. I won't find my results out til probably monday when I take Jeff in.

The thing that scares me the most is that if *I* am positive for mono, I need to defer from school...which means I"ll be out for 3 months. Oh please let it be my thyroid or something else that is causing this overwhelming fatique, and not mono!! I only have 12 weeks left of school, I just want to finish now, not have it drag into next year. :c(

So that's where it stands here.

Bonnie

Awesome Day!!

Today at school we had guest instructors and we spent the whole time with class discussions and hands on demos by these guys. One was the owner of Southeastern School of Neuromuscular and Massage Therapy....there are currently 6 campuses throughout the south east I think...It was so great to meet him and learn his story, and watch him in action. I know practice is the key to anything and the more I get my hands on people and familiarize myself with what I'm feeling without seeing, the better intuition I'll have. I think it's kind of like quilting in a way. I know I can thread that bobbin and insert it in the quilting machine, underneath the quilt, without ever looking and I'm right dead on because perception increases with practice. I started out having to replace the bobbin under there by peeking under the quilt....making sure everything went just so. Now I can just reach under there blind and it's like nothing at all to replace that bobbin. I'm looking forward to being that perceptive about what I feel when I have my hands on treating people through massage therapy.

Having the drawing for the quilts today was really fun too! I wish I could have done one for all of the graduates, but there was just too many of them for that to be feasible or even obtainable and realistic....so collecting names from everyone, and having the instructor draw the names was very fun :c)

The pics I got aren't the greatest, but I did get pictures! I was really touched by the big hug I got from Shaun when his name was drawn! He is such a big guy, but quiet and gentle. I think that's the most open I've seen him ever! (Quilts have a way of doing that to people?)

Bonnie

Friends graduating!

I've been in massage therapy school for 9 months now. I have 3 months to go, but they have classes graduating each quarter. Tomorrow night several friends will be graduating, leaving me behind! (but only by 3 months!)

For the last graduating class (there were only 4 from my day time classes) I made each of them a lap quilt to take with them either to snuggle up with themselves or use in their practices to keep their clients warm.

This next class is TOO BIG! There was no way to make everyone a quilt, so I was going to pass on it completely....but last night my heart was tugging at me as these friends get ready to go off into their lives, many of which I might not cross paths with again.

I had a thought......what if I took two quilts that I *WAS* going to donate to the guild's charities, and then drew from the names of all the graduating friends, so that TWO people could take home quilts from me? I think it might be fun! Might add some spark to the last day of school for them.

So last night I sewed on some labels, and this morning I took pics of these two "simply strippy" quilts. They are very fast and fun to make. I hope they like them. I know they aren't representative of alot of my work, but I figure they can be loved hard and used well, even if they aren't heirlooms. But you know what? let's face it.....these friends are NOT quilters and they are not going to judge my quilts as if they were going to Paducah or Houston!

I'll take my camera to school and see if I can get pics with the winners and their new quilts :c)

Bonnie

Featherweights..

On the washing machine saga..... Turns out it was a gear or something in the transmission! $190!!!! But that's half the price of a new washer, and he said this one was in such good condition should last us another 7 years or more, all it needed was this gear. I'm not in the mood to go washer shopping anyway, and I hate disposing of the old ones, so since he was here I said FIX IT.... Wash is now running....

I got an email from my good friend Lucy who lives in Haarlem, The Netherlands. She drove 2.5 hours to a little sewing machine shop to buy herself a featherweight! I am so tickled for her, she has wanted one for a long time and I guess they are a rare treat there, especially finding one in working condition. She sent me a pic of her new baby, and I turned around and sent her pics of my two. I thought i'd upload them here as well.

I bought the black one first, it's birthdate is 1942. I found him in an antique mall in Boise Idaho. I have the case, but it is missing the tray that fits inside. However, he came with lots of attachments and the little oil can :c) I do use this machine when I go on quilter's retreats, etc...but you have to be careful about sewing a project with different machines....The seam allowances may vary, even if you are using 1/4" feet. I think it is safe to do things like paper foundation piecing, or string piecing or things where seams don't matter when you are switching between machines, but I get the best results sewing with the same machine through the project.

The little white one was made in Scotland in 1964! I stumbled into him in a little shop in Twin Falls Idaho. He doesn't have a case, but I keep him in a little soft sided cooler that has a shoulder strap and pockets for extra goodies. I love them both, but don't use them as much as I could....

My favorite machine is a Bernina 1080 that has been a work horse for 10 years now and I wouldn't trade it for anything. It doesn't have alot of fancy stitches, but I'm not into doing machine embroidery or using those kinds of stitches. I straight piece, I use zig zag occassionally, and don't even THINK about asking me to do button holes! :c)

I also have two treadles, and a hand crank, plus a wilcox & Gibbs treadle head that I couldn't resist. Numerous other singers in round wooden cases, and a pfaff and a viking that I just HAD to have and the price was too good to pass up, but I find myself still sticking to the Bernina 1080 as my main machine. Why have so many machines? I don't know! It boggles the mind!

Real Life Stuff....

The washing machine went out this morning. UGH! Wouldn'tcha know it...right in the middle of a white load with bleach added....during the agitation the agitation stopped (leaving me extremely agitated!), was making a horrible grinding noise....and I had to rush downstairs to see what the commotion was, and shut it off. I had to call two repair places before I found one who could actually make a house call within the 24 hour/7 days a week time frame that their yellow pages ads promised! Must be a run on washer repairs going on in SC this time of year.

In the back of my mind looms the question.....is the washing machine doomed, or is it fixable? It's about 7 years old and has been used heavily through teenage boys and the rest of us. Is there such a thing as lighting a candle for an appliance on the blink that needs to last just a bit longer? If so, I'll light one!

Repair guy should be here by 11am....this is another test, to see if they actually show up.

Things are interesting with an extra teen in the house. I'm having to retrain things like "dishes are not to be parked in the sink, they go in the dishwasher...." And it seems like because the new kid doesn't KNOW this rule, it has the same effect on my son as if HE never knew it before either? Maybe Jeff is too embarrassed to let his friend know that he KNOWS that dishes go in the dishwasher. Maybe it's a sign of being mommy-whipped if you DO put your dishes in the dishwasher without asking? Makes you less of a man? Can't let our friends see that...we'll just pile them in the sink and really be macho! *grumble*

The weather here is just jungle hot. I can't explain it any better than this....come home from my morning walk just soaked and dripping. It zaps the energy out of you so badly that I've been falling asleep exhausted on my feet by noon, having to take a nap before I can go on with the rest of the day. Ceiling fan blowing on my hot self the whole time.....I'm talking dead to the world deep sleep for a nap in the middle of the day. Oh, I can't wait until fall comes!

That's the extent of the excitement around here. I did get the binding machine sewn to the front of the midterm mayhem little quilt, just haven't started the hand work to stitch it down to the back yet. Just plain too hot and exhausted!

Exam in school tomorrow....lateral torso compartment. Did well on the quiz on it last week, this is the exam exam this week. I've got the origins and isertions of the muscles down, just need to review on the actions of each muscle. (extends and rotates head to same side, medially rotates and extends humerus, flexes and laterally flexes trunk...etc.) I learned by a question I got wrong on a previous test that flexion and LATERAL flexion are not one and the same thing and you have to specifically differentiate between the two. Just because something laterally flexes (to the side) doesn't mean that it does regular flexion (front/back) UGH. And this is probably more about muscles and their actions than you want to know at this time....so I'll put this on hold and let you get back to reading about quiltie things :c)

Bonnie

I finished my midterm practical yesterday! YES!! I got a 98% for a hands on neuromuscular exam. So happy me. It is really stressful having instructors watch you working on a "client". I also turned in my required 50 "outside of school" massages paper work....I've had to practice on 50 guinea-pig-people, and it wasn't as hard to find that many people as I thought. Seems like people hear "free massage?" and they just come out of the woodwork and onto the waiting list :c) The term paper/case study is also turned in....so my plate is clear until next wednesday when I have another exam. A few breather days in store, and some evenings studying, but nothing like what it's been.

I came home yesterday with a desire to sew something, but not having energy for anything big. I decided the little string blocks could be a little quilt if I only made 6 more blocks...slapped on some borders, and voila, even the desire to quilt it quick hit me and it was done in no time.

I wasn't sure on thread color, and since this is small, I wanted to do something pretty to blend with all the scrappy strings, so I used a verigated rayon that goes from kind of a teal blue to pink to cream...
 

Detail shot of the varigated rayon thread for quilting. I quilted a feather plume in each block, following the 'X' formation made by the pink strips that ran through the center of the blocks. I think the pink inner border tied the pink together, made it stand out a bit more. I hope to get the binding on and start sewing it down this evening. :c)

Eureka!!

Things here have gotten interesting!! My 15 yr old son Jeff has a friend who just graduated highschool. Cullen is the son of a single parent mother, and his mother just relocated (I think there is a boyfriend involved, and that is why Cullen was reluctant to go too..not sure yet) out of town. Cullen has a steady job here and wants to go into the military, so needs a temporary place to stay until he gets his ducks in a row. So...I now have an adoptee son added to the household! Cooking for 4 isn't any harder than cooking for 3, and he is a great kid and I'm glad to have him here. So is Jeff. I think he has missed having his big brother around since Jason moved out a few years ago. (Jason is 21, will be 22 in nov..)

My friend had an extra twin matress, so the massage table came down in what WAS the office/massage therapy room, and Cullen can have that room for as long as he needs it.

The Eureka part of this post is.......here I was knocking my head feeling like I couldn't get interested in another project, where did my steam go, etc? Guess what I discovered? It shouldn't be much of a revelation, but......I had been trimming and cutting scraps down, and there was this little pile of leftovers that weren't long enough to be strings, weren't big enough to be strips or squares, and I couldn't chuck them. Still, I'm talking SMALLER than 6" long and some really narrow stuff here. So....I cut some 4" foundation papers from the deli papers I use for string piecing, and I started piecing string blocks with them. They are so cute and will finish at only 3.5". I remembered a pic of an antique quilt that I had seen and tried using a comon fabric for down the center of the block. It doesn't have to be EXACTLY centered, and it looks more charming if it IS a bit off....but still, I think the pink that I chose is either a) too narrow, or b)too light? Any comments? I really didn't want to go BLACK or RED..it seems like red is a neutral in lots of my quilts as it is :)

So what was the Eureka lightbulb? I loved piecing on these because the pieces were already cut and I could do LIBERATED things with them....letting things be wonky. The problem with my mitre boxes blocks? I had to pull stash and cut 1.5" strips from YARDAGE! ACKKK! 4 strips for every two blocks....unfold, cut, refold, put away, pull new....matching fabrics and trying to get variety? Now I know why I love my scrap bins so much...it's all there, I just need to sit and sew! So what will happen to the mitre box blocks? I think I'll still keep them on a back burner. I'll cut strips for them from other things I am cutting, like when I am cutting bindings or borders etc...or trimmings from backings...I'll have a mitrebox strip bin and pretty soon I CAN just sit and sew without having to pull 4 pieces of yardage and cut for every 2 blocks. I think being a scrap quilter has spoiled me! I can sit and sew instantly if I am working with bits and snips.

I read a quote from another quilter that rings so true to me, and it IS a moment of realization. Jamie Wallen wrote:
"I came into quilting from a fine art background and the age-old curse of forgetting what you already know kicked in and held me prisoner for a minute (OK months). Then I remembered the rule I've always lived by, "If the train doesn't stop at your station, well then it's not your train."

I think alot of us want to quilt like "so and so" and try so hard to go in avenues that are just not our train!

Really arty abstract quilts are not my train. Baltimore applique is stunningly beautiful, but is not my train either. All are so beautiful to look at, but that isn't the music my instrument plays. Oh, how I love two fabric quilts....I love the blue and white, and the red and white....gorgeous...could I piece one? Kicking and screaming maybe! (maybe not!) I've got to have alot of different fabrics and colors and textures going in my fabrics (size and scale of print, geometrics, stripes) to keep my mind from going numb with boredom.

So the moral of the story is, if you find yourself stuck in a rut and can't find out WHY you can't get excited about that next project....maybe it just wasn't your train! Never fear, there'll be another one along in a bit that might just be perfect for you....I hope you enjoy the ride!

Bonnie

My baby sister Mary had her first baby this week! It's a girl! They named her Mackenzie Faith. What a sweetie! I put together these left over swap blocks into a little quilt and sent it off to her. Mary and I are "book ends". I am the oldest child of 8, and she is the youngest. We are 20 years apart. I got to be there with my mom when she was born. My infant daughter had passed away 5 months before, so being there for my baby sister was such a healing experience for me. Anyway! I am so proud of Mary and so happy for her and her hubby.  

Scrap Sorting...

It's been so hot! (yes, I've said this before and I'll say it again!) It kind of takes the wind out of wanting to sit and sew and work with an iron close at hand. So....I've spent time each day the past few days sorting through a bin of scraps that was kind of accumulating. Leftover strips of borders, and trimmings from quilt backings mostly. I've got them stripped down into different sizes of strips from 1.5" to 3.5" and put in their little individual bins, and I've got a handful of pieces to trim to either 2" or 2.5" squares. Sometimes when doing this, it gets my fuel going again so I have the desire to sit and sew with that hot iron!

It seems when people know I sew, and sew charity quilts, they are always bringing me THEIR cast offs to guild and sending them home with me. This is a mixed blessing! Sometimes (and I haven't figured this out yet) it is more fun to sew with someone else's cast offs than it is to sew with my own yardage! Maybe they sent me fabrics that I've never had in my collection before, or a different style or color than I am drawn to, and they add so much interest to my scrap quilts, even the easy ones I am donating. Alot of our charity quilts go to children, and I'm not drawn to buying brights and novelties, so when they come in, it is fun to sew with them.

Then there is that rule of "if it's still ugly, you just didn't cut it small enough"....I love log cabins made from 1.5" strips and EVERYTHING goes in there, and the uglies just either blend in or add a spark. Not much showing to identify a fabric is ugly by the time you take those seam allowances.

I set aside some full width of fabric 1.5" strips from these trimmings I've been doing to use in the mitre box blocks. I'm hoping I can get organized and get back to them. This week I have a quiz, a term paper, and a midterm practical exam. I think my brain is so frazzled that I am having a hard time concentrating on piecing. So this is where the whizzy whacking down of scraps at least fits the bill and accomplishes something for now!

Bonnie

ARgh Again!

I think something is up with my website, because I can't get it to open. I can't get the webhost services homepage to open either, so maybe it's a universal thing with whoever has pages hosted by global space solutions? I tried to peek at my FTP files to see if everything was there....I can't get that to connect to the server either, but I did get mail to download. Something is fishy! This makes me feel rather panicky...Mhhhhmmmm! I think it's time I get one of those USB port data storage stick thingies. The good thing is, I have been with global space since 1997 and have NEVER had a problem with them. I'm hoping it's just weekend maintenance or installing new servers or SOMETHING *fingers crossed*

So...because of this, anything I have uploaded to my blog FROM my webserver is not showing up because they are stored there, not in blogspot. Lesson to be learned? Upload pics TO blogspot, not have them linked somewhere else. I"m sorry for the pictures that have gone awol, hopefully they will be back when my web server gets whatever maintenance they are doing done. (At least I hope that is what they are doing!!!) That also means I am missing side bar stuff like the sign my guestbook, view my guestbook, email me links...*sigh*

Bonnie

Comments, Guestbooks and noreply-comment@blogger.com

I had a lady sign a comment on my page....and because I have email notifications that someone has left a comment, her comment shows up in my email. In my haste, I reply to it, and only as it's sending do I realize that it will be gone with the wind because the address was noreply-comments@blogger.com Auuughhhh! (*&@#&(*&!

I wish blogger would tell you WHICH post they were commenting on when they send you this little notice. I had to scroll through everything on my blog trying to find which one she commented on. What if it was clear back in the archives?

So..I find her. I click on her name, and it tells me she has no page and no email address. I think she joined blogger just so she COULD comment? But how do I reach her back with answers to her questions? I posted a comment in reply to her comment, on a post I made long ago. I hope she can come back and find the answer :c)

It is easier for me to reply to someone who doesn't HAVE a blog if they just sign the guestbook because there is a place to put their email address if they want me to reply. I can't do telepathy. I don't know their email addresses unless they give them, and I can't send telepathic messages with the answers to their questions unless I have a way to reach them back.

Now that THAT is off my chest....I'm back to cleaning the quilting room. I bought a litle 5 drawer plastic cart thing at Sam's Club today. I put my overstock of cone thread for the quilting machine in it, and the top drawer has templates and gadgets and some idea books for the long arm as well. Can one ever have too many plastic organizer thingies? I don't think so!

A while ago someone had given me a box of thread because they thought it was what I would use in quilting. Now someone will shoot me because I just made room junking this stuff....it was HUGE HUGE HUGE industrial cones of WOOLY NYLON. Doesn't work with my kind of quilting! Oh, who knows, maybe it would in a pinch, but I don't think I want to hang on to it to find out. I need the room! Are the fiber-art police going to come arrest me? I need to condense, downsize, organize and shift things around in here. Besides that, it's just too darn hot!!

Bonnie

Another week, Another exam!

Okay...for the second time I'm writing this! Take this lesson from me and do NOT back page while you are composing on blogger's composer page..you will lose EVERYTHING! :c/

I had an exam today in anatomy. Weeha, I only missed 3 and the ones I missed were what I consider trick questions. Don't you love it when your choices are:

a) this
b) that
c) this and that
or
d) none of the above

:c/ I think I chose this, when the answer was this AND that...see what I mean? Oh well, when it comes to real life, will that matter anyway that I got the answer half right? Who knows. Right now it is just getting down to crunch time. Midterms in a couple weeks..study study study..where is the time for quilting supposed to fit in?

I did finish a top I posted here earlier. My friend is undergoing chemo, and I thought she might like something to drag with her to her treatments and to snuggle up with when she feels blah. This is the one I called brick bowties because that's what they kind of looked like to me:



The quilt is so busy with all the scraps that it worked really well with the over all tossed feathers quilting:


I put a lable on it and will drop it off tonight.

I added another customer's quilt that I just finished to my customer quilts page...it's a stack n whack star done in oriental fabrics, very pretty. It's fun sometimes quilting on fabrics that I'm not usually drawn to. It exposes me to alot of different styles and tastes, colors and textures, and keeps me from feeling like I am quilting the same thing over and over and over. If you want to check it out, go here:
Customer Quilts
Lets see, what else? I got Jeff registered for 9th grade today...and the fees were $56.00! I suppose I got off cheap because I didn't have to buy alot of school supplies and he can use his last year's back pack, but sheesh....I can't believe how fast the summer went, he'll be back to school on the 11th.

Trim is STILL not done in the family room, but we've been gone and I guess I'm in no hurry. Hopefully this weekend we can get all the 1/4 round put down and move the furniture back from the living room to the family room.

NEED to find some time to sew! I get really cranky when I don't get it....more school tomorrow, maybe over the weekend I can squeeze some in.

Bonnie

Whew, what a week!!

Where has the quilting time gone this week? It's been a few days since I've posted. Wednesday and Thursday are the days that I'm at school, and here we are friday.

It has been SO hot and humid the past week or so. This is my 3rd summer in South Carolina, and the hottest by far! The rain did come last night,thunder and lighting in the middle of the night. I remember vaguely waking up to acknowledge it, and then falling right back to sleep. For some reason, I can sleep really well through a storm, I love the sound of the rain and the thunder, and even the flashes of light.

I spent the day finishing a customer's batik bear paw quilt that I thought turned out JUST beautiful. I am really happy with the way it turned out, and I hope she thinks so too.

I have added a page to my website called
Customer Quilts
I plan on adding more note worthy quilts to it in the future.Take a peek at the batik bear paw there! I also found a free program that makes thumb-nails in any size you need them, so this was my first experience with thumb-nails linking to bigger images. I keep learning!

I also monkeyed with the template for my blog page a bit...I found that I could make better use of the page if I didn't have so stinking much margin. So I changed the page width! And then I changed the page COLOR, and then I found I could link all sorts of little graphics. FUN!

Now I am toying with typing this whole entry in netscape composer, and then just pasting the html into the 'add entry' thing for blog spot. I'm hoping it will work and that way I can get more than one pic per post in.

I've got 8 whole mitre boxes blocks done, so that means I've only done 4 sets since you get two blocks from a set. See my new laminate floor! Pretty pretty..I shouldn't have cropped the pic so close so you could see more of it. I like these blocks and the method, just need more time to sew, which I haven't had this week.

We are headed to Charleston for the weekend, hoping to spend some nice relaxing time on the beach, maybe a bit of window and touristy shopping. There are a couple quilt shops down that way, but I really don't NEED more fabric, and i haven't been inspired by any patterns out there. I am more inspired to search ebay.com for pics of antique maverick quilts...I've got a whole folder full of pics I've saved for inspiration. Oh, another good thing...School starts in about 2 1/2 weeks, so my 15 year old will be out of summer-teenage-retirement! YES! I can't tell you how happy that makes me!

Bonnie

If my house burned down...

I was trimming some "quilt leftovers" this morning, and thinking to myself...If there was a fire, what would I save? I think the scraps and the fat quarters are more valuable to me than the yardage on the shelves.....The scraps have memories of other things I have made with them, there are alot of years in collecting this odd blend of scraps I have in my drawers..I couldn't duplicate it if I tried! I could go to a quilt shop and start a new stash, but I could never duplicate the mix of scraps I've accumulated over 20+ years... Old, ugly, out of print, outdated...they are mine and pieces of my life are attached to them. I came across a scrap of pink calico as I was digging and it was like visiting an old friend... "echos of an old rendition of 'I remember you' playing through her head".

Now I don't know if that is exactly philosophical thinking or not, or how do I apply those thoughts to the rest of my life. Maybe it's the same kind of thinking that people have when they lose everything..it's the pictures and momentos they miss most, not the furniture or clothing or anything that can be easily replaced.

I was looking in someone's webshots (I almost typed webshits...terrible what typos can make you giggle, pardon me!) album the other day, her quilts were beautiful...except each one was a carbon copy of some other quilt somewhere. "This quilt made with all Thimbleberries" "this quilt made with all authentic civil war reproductions" "this quilt made with all Aunt Gracies" and I thought to myself "Where are the memories?" Am I the only one that feels this way? I mean, these quilters who quilt "kit" quilts eventually have to build up a REAL scrap stash from the leftovers, don't they? Is there hope that in the future their next project might be to make something that just says SCRAP HAPPY and doesn't have to "name-drop" a fabric manufacturer in the process like Hoffman, Moda, Benartex?

I think I'll go play with some of my lowly leftovers and all their memories :c) I've got an idea for a quilt in the works....Sew 4 strips together, cut them into triangles with the long side of the triangle along the edge of the strip...you can get two blocks from each set of strips...4 triangles of one kind, 4 of the opposite. Lay them out all together with the tips pointing in and sew them into a square with an X. It looks like a log cabin with 3 rounds around it, but instead of 12 seams around one center square, this makes two blocks with 9 seams total! Weehaa..I love stuff like this. I'm calling them "mitre boxes" unless I can come up with something more interesting.

This is the cool idea I was thinking of yesterday. Usually my scrap quilts use shorter cuts, but this one needs a full width of fabric cut, so strips are 1.5" X 44" (or close) I sewed the 4 strips together and pressed them in one direction, then used the wondercut ruler to cut triangles from the set. You get two opposite blocks from one strip set, so cut 8 triangles (there will be a bit left over, but not much!) 

Two sets of 4 and a bit left over!

Two opposite blocks from one strip set! This could be a cool quilt, and so much easier than building log cabins with strips round and round...

Can you find the invisible dog? If it weren't for the black nose and the long pink tongue, I think he blends into the forest floor pretty well! This is Buddy, and he is 5. Best dog ever! We love to go hiking in the state forest that is near us. I'm waiting for fall when the weather isn't so dang hot, humid, and oppressive! 

I am a junkie for trying new techniques and styles with my quilting. I needed a practice piece to try this all over freehand swirling feathers design, so I chose the green 9 patch quilt top I finished a few weeks ago. The jist of the design is that you start somewhere not too close to an edge, quilt a question mark, feather around it....letting the feathers fill the area, then take off, quilt another question mark, feather back, etc....supposed to be called "A flurry of angels". This thing stumped me so much and I found myself quilting myself into dead ends! So..I am calling this one Broken Wings instead of "flurry of angels!" I do like how it turned out, thank heavens the piecing is busy enough not to show any speed bumps that I hit along the way! It's trimmed, I just need to put the binding on, probably start on that tonight.

Cose up and side-lit view of the "broken wings" quilting! My main problem was trying to not make the machine stitches too big when doing the bigger plumes....I tend to get smoother results wtih wide sweeping movements, and I was outrunning the stitch regulator on the machine :c/