doll quilt, stars and birds, oh my!

I've been staying home lately and very keeping busy.  Winter is so good for that.

First up:  A Little Doll Quilt for Diane.  (Kelly - recognise the shoofly?)

Here's the pieced back.  I "made do" with scraps of this because I knew Diane would like it.  I also like that it makes it look like a full sized quilt.

I tea dyed it to make it look vintagy and older.

Here is the before shot.  The blues are a brighter and the shirtings lighter.

Here we Sew Again - I re-pinned this quilt for machine quilting.  I started this project in 2011.  Can you believe that?  It has a long, sad story that I hope ends in redemption.

Here are the steps I take to get ready to machine quilt:

I move my ironing board to support the quilt weight.

I always start with a fresh needle.  I consult this sheet from a magazine that I keep in my thread drawer (it only took me 20 years to do this :)

Get my top and bottom thread picked out and spin some bobbins.

Clean my bobbin well really well.

I also like to use these Steady Betty bands that Susan gave me.  They help move the quilt without hurting your shoulders.  I only use the left one, and I grab with my right hand.

After having some slipping issues, I altered them to fit my hand better.  

Action shot.

I'm normally not a timer, but I thought I'd see how long it takes to quilt one fan.  They have 10 arc lines each.  Time included all starts, stops, clipping and unpinning.  Not bad!

Here is the size of a fan section.

All those starts and stops makes for lots of thread trims!  This is my second batch.  I think I'll toss this in the woods, maybe a bird with use it for nesting material.  Did I say birds?

Bird Alerts!
I saw a Raven in the yard a couple of weeks ago.  They are amazing.  I saw it swoop over the yard and pick up a snack and take it back to the branch to eat.  Yikes.

Do you see what I see?  I saw this flash in the woods and grabbed the binoculars and camera.  (boy was it dreary yesterday)

A Pileated Woodpecker! (better photos on the link)   We played peek-a-boo.  This is only the second sighting of him.

He is moves very fast around a tree, then it is on to the next.  I moved from room to room to keep watching until he was gone.  These photos are with my highest zoom then enlarged on the computer so aren't great.

Today is Westering Women day!  I'm off to see it and I'll be posting my 2nd block on IG #westeringwomen and #westeringwomensewalong.   I'm also going to be posting the blocks of 2 Illinois friends here soon.

xo

Dream Vacation

** I interrupt this quilting blog for a travel post, quilting fun will resume as soon as possible**

I've finally finished working on my photos of my recent trip.  I don't pretend to be a great photo journalist, it's more like, Oh! I should take a photo of this.

I get really caught up in what I'm doing and seeing, but here are some high points of my trip.

We're here!  In Rome wait to go to the ship.

I must say again that the 4 year wait for this one was worth it!
The MS Noordam (we cruised on her 7 years ago in the Caribbean) is a lovely ship.  Our home away from home.

The first sea day they had a tour of the kitchen, one of my favorite things.  This is the Pasta kitchen - look at the size of those pots!

Fruit and vegetable carving - I love the photo food maps that are posted - everything is plated very beautifully.

Our first port; Dubrovnik, Croatia.  We loved it.

We had a wine tasting here after our bike ride at a private winery.

We took a 5 mile bike ride to this Monastery.  It was beautiful.

This is Ancient Olympia.
This cruise became knows as the "Hot Rocks Tour".

The original Olympic stadium - the original.  The kids and I ran it for fun.

Andrew Zorba Dances at lunch

Beautiful Santorini.  This a town called Oia.

It's hard to see, but this is the mule trail.  There are 3 ways to get up and down to the port; cable car (our choice), walking, or riding a mule.

Turkey!  I'm very excited to add Asia to my list of visited continents.  Turkey is beautiful.

We visited Mary's Chapel.  The Virgin Mary lived out her life here on a mountain top in this 3 room home.  The 2 most recent Popes' have visited it.

Ephesus was my favorite place.  The ruins (hot rocks) are incredible.  Cleopatra walked the same marble streets.  It was an incredible place.

My favorite; the library - remarkable!

You know you're not in Jersey when you see this guy...

 A pretty display at the dessert extravaganza.

The Parthanon on the Acropolis (hotest rocks of all)

This temple with the Caryatids is my favorite thing here.  Love those ladies.

Deck 3, Promenade deck was our meet up place in the late afternoon.

Hanna and I loved dressing for the formal nights.  Hooray, she got to wear her graduation dress again.  We look like salt and pepper shakers, lol.

This is a Clock Tower at the Cathedral in Messina, Italy.  It is the largest mechanical perpetual clock in the world - It shows, day, time, year - but also the constellations, the phases of the moon, the biblical year, etc.  It is incredible!

Thanks for visiting and taking the tour.

Whether you have been traveling or enjoy the summer at home, I hope it's been great.  Now I'm ready for fall, how about you?