Happy Thanksgiving.......

Blessings, Cathi

Teresa's was wonderful.......

We had a great time at Teresa's tonight. I was having so much fun, I didn't really remember to take many pictures. But here are a few. The first one is from Martha(non-blogger). I can't remember if she said they were from a kit or a BOM but I do remember she got it from QBee Quilts in southwest Charlotte.

This picture is of Cheryl (non-blogger) getting ready to start her next applique project. Cheryl has a thing for animals.



The "surprise" Teresa had was a couple of games that she had arranged. We played "button, button" for the entire two hours. I didn't win anything but I didn't lose, either. The second (and much more fun because I was pretty good at it) was Quilt Pictionary. We each took turns picking slips of paper with block names and drawing the quilt block. The only rules were that we couldn't draw the actual block or use numbers or letters. I was pretty good at guessing......I guessed one in 3 seconds.......but I am now thinking it was because my team members were pretty good draw-ers. I thought my drawings were pretty good but noone guessed mine. So either I am not so good at drawing, the block names were too obscure or my teammates were bad guessers. Anyway, my team didn't win but we sure had a lot of fun.

Thanks, Teresa

How's that amaryllis coming.........

I didn't take a picture of Valentine this morning. I was running late as usual. Dear Hubby and I bought a new mattress back in July. You know the one.....with the super soft padding on the top. Ever since then I have found it nearly impossible to get out of bed in the morning. It is so comfortable. So as usual I was running late for work.

Valentine is not much taller than last week but he is looking a lot greener. You couldn't tell from last week's picture but he was looking a bit sickly.

Tonight, I am going to Teresa's house for our monthly applique/handwork group called As the Needle Turns. We usually meet at a local church but this month we received an email that Teresa is hosting it at her house and to expect a surprise! I love T's surprises. We'll have to see which one of us can get the details up on their blog first!

Blessings, Cathi

Hello, noreply-comment bloggers.........

I don't know how the rest of you feel about comments. Sometimes I get frustrated when someone leaves a comment and I can't send an email back because they are a "noreply-comment" blogger. And they don't even know they are. Case in point........ME. I left a comment for myself on one of my blogs. Sure enough, a few seconds later the email comes to me and it is from "noreply-comment@blogger.com" After what seemed likes days of searching, I found out from Amanda at notsoextraordinary.blogspot.com, that all it takes is a little teeny tiny click of a box on your blogspot profile to fix it.

Now maybe you don't want people to reply to your comments and that's fine. But I love getting (non-spam) emails. I would even love to comment back to some people but can't find an email to send back to them. If you would like to join the non no-reply world, here's all you have to do....

• Go to your dashboard
• Next to your picture, click "edit profile"
• Click the teeny little box (third one down) that says "show my email address"

So simple.....I feel so silly. I swear I looked everywhere for that little toggle. Now I know.......now you know.

Blessings, Cathi

Okay, maybe by Valentine's Day

Well, I finally got the amaryllis planted. I think I'll name it Valentine......'cause I think that is when it will be blooming! It's supposed to be deep red, according to the package, so I think the name is just right.

Blessings, Cathi

The saga of the Amaryllis

A couple of weeks ago, Leann over at You would even say it glows posted about her amaryllis. I thought this would be a neat thing to do. Mine would only be a week behind. I figured if I got it started that next weekend, it would bloom the week before Christmas......perfect! Well, a week went by before I even bought the thing. Now five days after that I have decided to show you how mine looks. Here it is........



.......still in the box. Stay tuned.

Blessings, Cathi

I'm not a quiltmaker, I'm a top maker.

As you can see on my sidebar, I have a list of UFO's (unfinished objects). Please DO NOT think that this very short list is the only UFO's I have on my quilting list. I just needed to start somewhere. One of these days soon, I will put the entire list up there. Almost my entire UFO list is just the quilting....hence the title of this post. I love making tops. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have finished quilts but I just haven't taken the time to practice my free-motion quilting. And I can't really afford to pay someone to finish them. But I did manage to finish one little table runner that I started not too long ago. Maybe there is hope for me.

Thimbleberries Fall table runner made with not so many Thimbleberries fabrics. But it's cute!

Blessings, Cathi

FYI - Never volunteer to fix an old quilt *sigh*

A co-worker of mine asked if I would mind fixing a quilt that was made by some long ago relative. His daughter always sleeps with it (so he says). It is well loved (ie: they didn't take real good care of it). And all the black fabrics have started to disintegrate. I thought sure why not. It is a log cabin pattern. I thought it would be as simple as appliquing new logs over the damaged black logs. But when I got into it, the batting was also gone behind those logs. So I had to take some quilting out to get the remaining batting out of the damaged areas. But there were two kinds of quilting. One was hand quilting done with cotton string. You read right, string. With the knots on the outside. The other quilting was machine quilting that must have been set at 25 stitch per inch. The only plus to that is that the tension was so off, that I could go on the back, pull the bobbin thread and 24" would come out. Then when I really looked at the back, I noticed that the backing was starting to wear thin in some areas showing the batting inside. What started out as a quick log applique has become a pretty big ordeal. To keep from going insane, I am just going to take out the quilting, fix the top, layer with new batting and backing and machine quilt.

I could just fix the bad logs and give it back but it wouldn't make it through another washing. At least I know it will be fixed to last for several more decades. Long ago relative's top will still look the same for the most part and I will have salvaged part of their family's heritage. But unless it's part of MY family heritage, I won't offer to do it again.

Blessings, Cathi