Tired but happy

It was way hotter today than it was supposed to be. The temperature reached 89 degrees, which is almost 10 degrees hotter than expected. I know that doesn't sound hot to most of you, but that's much hotter than comfortable for most of us around here. It's especially high for September. Thank goodness for the air conditioner in the longarm room!

Gandalf and I spent most of the day together. For those of you who are a bit mystified - no, Gandalf isn't my husband. My longarm is a Proto Stitch Wizard, so he had to have a name appropriate for a wizard. My goal was to quilt two flimsies today - and I made it! I chose two small ones that already had backs and batting prepared to size. By 2:30 I had them both quilted, so I took a break and went to Starbucks. The binding was already made for one of them, so I made binding for the other and by 5:00 the binding was machine stitched onto both of them. All that is left is the hand stitching on the back and the labels. I think I'll have three UFO's finished by guild on Thursday after all!

The first is a small table top quilt made from an orphan block. I stitched the block in the early 90's when I taught a class at Daisy Kingdom that covered half-square, quarter-square, and three-quarter square triangle squares. I used blocks from Marsha McCloskey's On to Square Two - a great old book for learning to piece complicated blocks from triangles. I think I turned the block into this little quilt around 2000 - I can't tell for sure because I guess I left this top off my UFO list! I just played with the quilting on this one and tried a bunch of new things. Some turned out better than others, and I'm happy with the results. It'll look just fine on one of my end tables in the dining room and it will be finished!

The second little quilt is made from the My House booklet by Little Quilts. I bought the kit for this quilt years and years ago at Stitchin' Post in Sisters Oregon. It sat around for 3-4 years before I made the top in 2001. I'm very happy to have it finished as I've always really liked it. It'll look great on the wall in the summer. This took three to four times as long as the other to quilt because it is primarily ruler work and stitch in the ditch. The only freehand quilting is around the flowers and the flower tendrils in the background of the flower basket.

I planned on oven roasted chicken breasts and baked potatoes for dinner tonight, but it was way too hot to turn on the oven. My husband - a prince among men - said to just make him a sandwich and he'd be fine. So tuna sandwiches were our dinner fare - and mighty tasty they were!