Just a nice day

I had a nice productive Saturday quilt-wise, even though I didn't do any sewing.

Meet Gandalf, my Proto Stitch Wizard.

After getting my hair cut I drove about 80 miles north on I-5 to the SW Washington longarm group meeting in Centralia. Due to my schedule I'd not been to a meeting since early August. I spent part of August, all of September and most of October quilting a king size customer quilt that was giving me fits. I was tired of quilting when I finally got that monster done, as I spent more time ripping out my errors than actually quilting (I'm still new at this and constantly learning). I did a couple charity quilts but hadn't touched the machine since early December. It needed some maintenance done, and I'm still not at all comfortable with the mechanical demands of a longarm. I needed something to get me excited about quilting again, and hoped the meeting would do that. I'm happy to say "mission accomplished". I came back with renewed enthusiasm. The maintenance that needed doing turned out to be very easy to do. Now I'm all ready to tackle the customer quilt that's been half pinned on the machine since early December (thank goodness my friend Sue is in no hurry at all to get that quilt back).

After dinner I went back to pressing more of the fabrics I pretreated Friday night. This is always a very sobering experience - it makes it VERY easy to swear off shopping for awhile - especially when I'm trying to find room on the shelves for the new additions. Unfortunately the feeling never lasts nearly long enough! I told my husband the next time I tell him I'm ordering fabrics for him to give me for my birthday or Christmas he needs to tell me "No!"

I'm trying to keep some of them separate this time, with the new Jo Morton fabrics in one stack and the Jane Austen fabrics in another. I'll share why in another post.
I shook out all the fabrics still waiting for washing - they were still in neat piles (more or less) from the shops - and separated them by color. When spread over the floor of the hall it looks like they've been multiplying when we were asleep. I couldn't possibly have this many new fabrics, could I? While I was pressing them my husband said "someone has made a nest here". I turned around and there was Shadow, nestled in the middle of the stack. It's impossible to be mad at him when he's so darn cute!