River's still rising

The James River is the highest it has been in 10 years. Too much rain. What a mess it is making!

You can't even see the no-wake sign. That is the ripple toward the center of the picture. There is a ton of logs built up in front of the gantry holding the floating pier. I have no idea how they will clean it out of there when the flood is done.

Yesterday morning

Normally there is a stone terrace on the other side of the river but even the trees on the other side are under water.  Ugh!

Last night.

You see the lights? That is the Capital Trail bicycle path between Richmond and Williamsburg. Totally under water. Ugh!

I ride this trail from home to work when it is warmer. No riding it right now, however!

They are going to have a lot of clean-up to do when the river goes down.

A Finish!

I am wiping my sweaty brow! I have a finish. 8 yards used.

Just in the nick nick nick of time.

I have finished my raveled edge jeans quilt yesterday. It was 15x11 blocks, 6-inches each. According to the Quilter's Paradise calculations, it used 8 YARDS! Woo Hoo!

I finished it and immediately took it to the coin laundry and washed and dried it. It looks so nice and raveled! DH just _loves_ it. I made in "man" colors.

Pictures will be taken later today.

Here it is before washing and adding the binding. I didn't like the way it was without the binding so I added a 3.5" strips of binding. O, I forgot to add that into the mix of the yardage count. 7-8 strips of 3.5". Humm.

Front Side

Jeans side

Santa Wall Hanging

My Santa wall hanging is now mostly quilted thanks to a day off due to snow! It's quilted enough to be bound. So I dug around in my Christmas fabrics and found the fabric for binding. It's not cut yet but that will be tonight.

I am expecting a ton of company when my brother and sister-in-law from California come for a visit on the 19th. A bunch of cousins are coming over.

SO... cleaning is happening at my house. My living room is a wreck since it is also my quilting studio. So fabrics are being sorted and put away.

I removed everything from the mantle and dusted and oiled the wood, washed the nick nacks, and put only _some_ of them back once they were dry. I found a lot of dead insects, yuk!

Time to get the Christmas decorations out and up!

My Santa is going to be hung up in the kitchen next to a small Christmas tree of Mom's that I found in _her_ Christmas stuff. I quilted it with gold metallic thread and I think it looks great.

Time to take a picture.

Snow Pic!

Getting really deep!

We ended up getting more than a foot of snow. Yeah. Really.

Deer Panel Quilt top pics!

So my Deer Panel quilt top is A TOP! and I got pictures of it this weekend.

Deer Panel Quilt Top

Now to get this thing quilted. YIKES! It's big. 82 x 86 inches.

A new top!

I have finished the baby I-Spy to top stage and also created a pieced back for it this weekend.

I had to resort to taking a picture on the ground as it was way too windy!

50 inches square.

On the Ground

Windy picture

I got the borders on my Deer panel top also and that's also in its final size of 82x86 but it was raining out all yesterday so no picture of that one.  <sad face>

A new finish - two in one week!

I have a new finish, a Baby Streak of Lightning, and an old finish that I had never taken a photo of. Oops!

My new finish came from a UFO of Mom's that I found. She had started a log cabin baby quilt in QAYG-style. She had only done one round around the center yellow square. Many, many strips were all cut selvage to selvage. The batting was cut, as well as the backing.

So I finished the squares. Quilted them each and then joined them in the quilt-as-you-go style I use (the one Sharon Pederson shows in her books).

I free-motion-quilted the blue fabrics and I think they turned out quite uniform even though each was done separately.

Front view - Baby Streak of Lightning

Showing a peek of the back

Back View - Baby Streak of Lightning

So I finished this one in May 2018 but forgot to take a picture so here it is! This is handquilted, which I don't do a lot of.

A completion

Well, I decided Sunday night we needed new hot mitts. Ours were just terrible. So I finished one Sunday night and one Monday morning before work. I'm happy!

2 new hot mitts!

Showing the back and loop

2 more new starts - o boy!

I have made a bunch of the blocks for the deer panel. Now I am struggling with adding a small border to fit the block sizes. I am stuck trying to figure out my zipper foot for this machine. I've never used that foot on this machine since I used it for quilting primarily.

I am adding two strands of black yarn to an inch width of fabric to create a ridge on the side of the panel and so I want to use the zipper foot to get right up next to the ridge. I think I am going to have to resort to YouTube.

I am going to the AQS Quilt show in Virginia Beach on Wednesday. Maybe I'll just visit a Janome vendor and get them to show me how to change the needle positions when using the E foot. LOL

I should have taken some pictures of the blocks. They are really turning out nicely and they are quickly building up the size of the quilt. I am also considering making a second quilt with the same fabrics as I still have a ton of this fabric.

So the new starts. I finally figured out what I am going to do with several hundred 5-inch squares I found in my mother's stash. I am adding 1.5 inch strips on all sides and 1.5 inch cornerstones. So I have a dark 5-inch square, then I used 4 matching light-colored 1.5"x5" strips and 4 matching _dark_ 1.5-inch cornerstones to make a square. If the 5-inch square is light, then the strips are dark and the cornerstones are light. This results in a 7-inch square which will be 6.5" finished. I'm liking it.

I will alternate light and dark with no sashing. See picture below.

Viewing a sample layout

It will take a while to get enough to make a quilt, but I'm ok with that. I finshed 9 blocks this weekend.

My 2nd new start is one of Bonnie Hunter's patterns from one of her books. It uses blue and white fabric. Made with two four-patches and two half square triangles. I had way too many blue strips left over from the baby quilt that was in Mom's UFOs.

I have finished quilting all 12 squares and have cut them to square them up at 10.75 inches. They look great! I brought them to work to view my layout on the big conference table.

Laying it out

They were just filing in and I barely got a picture of it. What a mess!

A New Start

All 12 blocks of the baby quilt are now quilted. I experimented with free-motion-quilting by button, i.e. I have a stop-start button on my machine and have never really used it. Takes some getting used to, but it's ok.

Mom left a generous amount of fabric around each block and I need to cut them all to the same size. I guess she was going to do a different sort of QAYG method than what I use.

So to do that, I needed to clear my cutting table. It's gotten a little stacked up. But, at the same time, my quilting group is starting to create quilts for the North Carolina Relief effort so OK I made a new start.

I found this very large deer panel in Mom's stash and she had also bought a lot of coordinating fabrics. And I mean, A LOT! Probably enough for two or more quilts. Golly!

After messing around (wasting time) designing in EQ8, I decided I am going to make a bricks-and-stepping-stones design around it (from Bonnie Hunter's free patterns) but mostly above and below it after framing the print with extra fabric so the blocks will fall correctly.

 I do really like this panel.

So I guess I need to name the baby quilt since it is almost a top. I think it's going to be "Baby Streak of Lightning QAYG."That's a mouthful!

The other one will be "Bricks and Stepping Stones with Deer." Hah! I am considering doing this one as QAYG also since the center is so very large.

I guess I now need to add them to my list of projects and count them up.

Free-Motion in Progress

So I have now finished walking-foot quilting all of the light halves of my 12 blocks. I started free-motion quilting the blue halves and I've gotten two done so far.

I really like how they are looking!

So I've added my pictures in huge size so you can check out the quilting! And also so I can look at them while I'm at work! <wink>

I used a beautiful yellow Isacord and a lovely Ricky Tims pale blue from Superior Threads.

Block 1

Block 2

I'm calling my walking-foot quilting "organic." I didn't mark and just eye-balled each line. Think Gees Bend.