And now for 2013

And now for 2013. I never could have imagined a year ago that I would be facing it without Peter. 

The quilt above is for the MQS Charity Quilt booth.  My friend Tricia is in charge and she decided to use this quilt, which is much more ambitious than most of the quilts that are donated, as a raffle quilt.  She asked our longarm group for a volunteer to quilt it and  no one volunteered -  we were all facing a busy holiday season and no one had time.  Plus, Tricia wanted it custom quilted and not everyone does that.  Later, when I heard that the organizations to benefit from the Charity Booth were Harry Hynes Hospice and Victory in the Valley (an organization that supports cancer patients) I knew that I had to quilt it.  Both groups were so wonderful and helpful to Peter and to me.

This is a Thimbleberries pattern and I know I have quilted a couple of these - I wasn't sure how successful custom quilting would be on it since it's pretty busy.  I struggled to come up with ideas for it and ended up doing something kind of whimsical, with words quilted on the blocks: Home Tweet Home, Birds of a Feather Flock Together and so on. 

I quilted it with the new Superior Magnifico thread which I wasn't as thrilled with as I am with their other threads.  It doesn't seem to show up as shiny and impressively as Glide thread but had some of the same problems.  It's also more expensive.  Has anyone else had the same reaction to it?


Today I drove to Manhattan with Tammy and Nancy to have our quilts appraised by AQS Certified Appraiser Carol Elmore.  I forgot to take pictures until the last one, Nancy's wallhanging.

Last weekend I visited Material Girls quilt shop in Wichita to meet my friend Siriporn and here is one of the shop samples she quilted - didn't she do an amazing job on it? 

Here is Cathy working at the shop - I wonder what that customer was saying to give her that expression!

And to finish up - some cat pictures:

Lily helping me read the newspaper.

One of my favorite Christmas gifts from my sister, a wind-up inch worm. 

 

Elsie wasn't so sure about it at first...

 Then it was love.