Machine-ish quilting

I huge thank you to my commenters who encouraged me to just go ahead and quilt this on my domestic machine.  I got it set up, quilted a row, discovered that my stitches weren't particularly even, but weren't particularly awful, when this happened...

First Scout discovered this on the table, then Angry Bob discovered it, then Sam discovered it, and then I decided that this will never be finished if I have to continually move cats from it.  I'm giving up for now, but will make a good solid attempt at finishing this in the future.

Time to use the machine

I hate to refer to this as a practice quilt, but that is basically what it is becoming.  I've decided to try to quilt this on my home machine and it is probably foolish to make my first attempt at quilting with such a large quilt, but I have a devil may care attitude and will not be stopped.  I'm just going to do straight lines with my walking foot.  Now that I have it all pinned, it looks to be a rather daunting task and I'm kind of tempted to unpin it and rent the long arm instead.  I'll have to take a look at it tonight and see how I feel.  Sigh.  I feel like an inadequate quilter if I won't know how to do this at home, yet, it doesn't seem that interesting to me to do this at home.  Yup, kind of talking myself out of doing this at home now! 

At least I have Angry Bob's moral support to help me through this decision.

Baby Love Quilt - Completed

I don't think there are words to express how frustrating I find binding a quilt is.  There are simply no words.

Dungeness Spit

Yesterday was the first hike of the year and it was, in theory, an easy one.  Dungeness Spit is an 11 mile round trip hike out on a bird sanctuary to the lighthouse at the end.  It isn't unusual to see seals playing in the kelp by the lighthouse and large freighters in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  We saw both.  And, yes it was cool, but at least there was a breeze.  

The business of binding

The dangers of binding a quilt with a flannel back are now very apparent to me.  Scout has decided that this is great and will not leave it.  I will clearly have to make her one of her own. I have the binding added to one side of the quilt and I now need to flip it over and sew it to the other side.  Some quilters - those who care about their final product - will tell you that you should hand sew the final side.  I really am not interested in doing this unless there is a machine involved, so I will be machine sewing both sides.  I know, I know, when did we as a society get so lazy? 

In other cat news, Scout's veterinarian convinced me to enter her photo in their pet photo contest.  It raises money for local animal charities so it seems to be a good idea.  This photo is the one I've chosen for her.  I like how she looks slightly annoyed.  I'll also be submitting one of these photos to the catsonquilts.com website to see if I can increase their fame.

Baby Love Quilt

The piecing is completed on the Baby Love Quilt.  I like it.  It's bright, but has a few mellower colors to tone it down.  I'm going to finish the backing soon and with any luck there will be time available on the long arm at Bayside this weekend.

I think my next trick is to spend some time practicing machine quilting on my home machine.  It would be nice to do some work at home as well as at Bayside.  It's funny, because I know there are quilters who would rather use their home machines and I am afraid to because I learned how to machine quilt on the long arm.  Okay, so maybe that is only funny to me.

Friday in the Garden

It was a beautiful Friday until it rained like crazy and ruined my dreams of taking my new bike out for a ride.  I did get some pictures of the elusive yellow rhododendron before the skies opened and ended the fun for everyone.  Other pictures are at the updated link on Spring April Flowers to the right.

I love this light yellow rhodie.  It looks almost good enough to eat.

This pink on is favorite of mine also.  I love how it glows in the light.  (And has withstood its rather unfortunate placement near the deck which results in the pine needles being swept on it.)

This hosta is slowly uncurling.  I didn't see the water drop on it when I took the picture, and it was a nice surprise to see it here.

This azalea is so bright it almost hurts to look at it, but it sure does add some sunshine to its corner of the yard.