Giving Thanks

Last week was Thanksgiving, and boy oh boy did we do it up: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce... the whole nine yards.  It was a great weekend!  Even though I haven't had time to work on the dragon quilt, I had an opportunity to work on something for my neighbor:

Anniversary Quilt

She found this AMAZING hand-stitched grandmother's garden quilt top in a chest in her house when she moved in 35 years ago.  The chest was full of Korean War memorabilia, so we're guessing this was probably made in the 50's using 40's fabrics???  I picked a few of my favorite prints and posted pics below ~ does anyone have an idea of when these fabrics are from?  Which is your favorite?

Anyway... I brought it to Nancy Stovall at Just Quilting to quilt it for her... as you can see it turned out gorgeous!!   It is a 25 year anniversary gift to her husband, and she knows they will be using it a lot... so we quilted it with a tighter pattern so it can be lightly washed.  It is just so beautiful ~ and I am giving thanks that I got to see something so old in such great condition!  I added a binding and gave it back to my neighbor ~ as soon as her hubby sees it, we'll be photographing it on her bed and I'll post pics.

The Count Is In

Last night I counted all the half-inch hexies I have finished for my Dragon quilt...  2,232 pieces done!!  Woo Hoo ~ I'm over half-way there!  My new goal is to have all the pieces finished by the end of the year. 

After all the pieces are finished, I'll lay them all out and play with it until I get what I'm looking for, then I can start sewing them all together.  It's a process, but I'm loving it.  These are the bins for the cream (dragon body) and the brown (background) colors.  I have all the cream I need, but I'm only halfway finished with the browns.

Outside of quilting, I've been getting ready for Thanksgiving.  I cook every year (I love cooking almost as much as sewing) and this year is no exception.  Luckily for me, I don't put much stress into it.  This year will be a little different because I will not be cooking any grains or refined sugars... but I'll manage just fine.  It's just nice having a little down time with family!

Time To Get Better!

 

I'm starting this post off with a special Happy Birthday to our lovely Rita Dog who just turned 14!  She is not a camera-friendly dog, so I'm happy to have a non-blurry picture of her.  We found this dog at large when she was 6 and she was neglected and totally schitzo... now with some love and indoor living she's turned into an amazing dog full of love (at least for those she knows well).

For me, today marks the first day of my antibiotic treatment and new diet plan.  I got a positive test result for SIBO so I'm biting the bullet and jumping into treatment even though this is the beginning of the holiday season (full of food).  The antibiotics will kill the bad bacteria, and the diet will help heal my intestinal lining... hopefully in 6 months I'll be a different person health-wise!  

The antibiotics are powerful... my first dose made me a little dizzy ~ but I guess they should be, I spent enough on them!!  Oh well, it's way better than needing a surgery or relegating myself to a lifetime of aches and pains.  The diet is very simple: meat broths, boiled veggies and meat, fermented veggies, and ginger tea.  That's it until some symptoms subside, then I can move onto slowly adding foods to the diet until I'm back to normal. 

I'm really happy about it actually.  I just hope I can do well with my self-control and find time to make all the foods from scratch.  That means a little less time sewing... but it's for a good cause ;)

Dragon Quilt Check In

Today marks 3 weeks since I've started sewing hexies for the Dragon Quilt... and this is what I have so far:

It may not look like much... but there are 1,363 hexies made already ~ that averages 64 a day!!  For me, this is a fantastic pace... much faster than my squid quilt.  I hope I can keep it up!

These are all the basic colors of the quilt:  creamy offwhites for the body, bright greens for the belly, reds and oranges for the top scales, and  golden browns for the background.  Looking at this photo, I want to add more oranges to the reds and more blues to the bright greens to round out colors.  The most hexies are the golden browns.  I have 539 done, and still need 1,522 more. 

I've gone through all my scraps ~ so now I'm on the hunt for monochromatic patterns in these colors.  Fabric depot had some fat quarters that will work well ~ I'm interested to see how many hexies I can make from a whole fat quarter... although I prefer using smaller pieces so there isn't too much of any one pattern.

Okay... I'm off to sew a few more!

Ona's Quilt

A few weeks ago I finished a baby quilt for a new little girl named Ona, and I thought I'd share some more pics.  I'm really happy with my free-motion-quilting!  This marks the 4th quilt that I've done FMQ and my stitch lengths are becoming a little more even and I'm doing better with keeping stitch lines smoother.  I'm loving the echo effect right now ~ it adds some nice organic movement to the straight lines of the patchwork.

I work on a regular singer sewing machine... so the hardest part for me is munching the whole quilt up in the throat while I work.  That's why this little baby quilt was so fun... it was small enough that I could easily maneuver it in the machine.  Plus it was for some pretty great friends of ours who had their first baby ~ so it was totally fun to make!