Friends and Milestones

Every Tuesday night I get together with my special Tangled Threads quilting friends. There are seven of us, though we don't see Peggy very often because she spends much of her time at home in Black Butte, Oregon. We get together to stitch, gab, and eat. (What is it about quilters - they seem to eat as much as they quilt!) Last night we were all together except for my friend Kathi. Kathi turned 60 yesterday, and she and her husband are celebrating with a trip to Vancouver Island, Canada. They will be back Friday night. On Saturday afternoon her husband has arranged for a surprise birthday tea. There will be 17 of us - the Tangled Threads and the women of Kathi's family. What a sweet husband! Tangled Thread Kim pieced little signature star blocks for us all to sign last night, and has pieced enough more for everyone else at the party to sign. Tangled Thread Sue will take a picture of the group on Saturday which she'll print on fabric. The little star blocks will surround the picture of the group in a memory quilt for Kathi. I consider myself so very blessed to have such wonderful friends as these!

Last night I continued working on the appliqué eagle block for my Heirloom Stitches quilt. (I should have taken a picture of it but I didn't think of it - I'll post one later.) This eagle has a cloth banner in its beak. Part of the banner goes behind the eagle's head and another part behind the eagle's body, but the center part goes on top of the bottom part of the eagle's beak. I've been struggling to position the banner correctly so it looks like all the pieces are connected, and struggling to get it under the top part of the beak but on top of the bottom part of the beak. This center section is very small, and my fingers are just too large to position it just right. I finally put it away, figuring I could do better with a pair of tweezers to when I got home. As I was driving home I had one of those "Aha!" moments! An easy solution occurred to me - so easy I actually said "Well, duh!" out loud to myself in the car. The problem is that I didn't figure it out sooner - it's too late now. Why oh why when I traced that banner did I trace it in three separate pieces? Why didn't I just trace it as one piece? That way I wouldn't have had to worry about positioning the pieces so they looked attached! And I wouldn't be trying to hang onto this tiny middle piece! It would have been so easy! But now, with both ends of the banner already appliquéd into place it's too late. I need to make sure to tuck this "lesson learned" somewhere in this brain so I can pull it out again when needed. That's the scary part of getting older - I tuck things like this into my brain that never again see the light of day!