Kaitlyn Loves her Stars!

This morning, I got up at 6:30 am to finish sewing the binding on Kaitlyn's Stars, a gift for a new baby on my husband's side of the family. I finished the binding before we went to church and hand sewed the label onto the back of the quilt in the car in a store parking lot while my husband ran in to get something he needed. We then drove to Kaitlyn's grandparents house for the "Meet the Baby" party.

Why, you may wonder, did I wait until the last minute to finish this quilt? As I mentioned in an earlier post, this past week was a very busy one for me and my husband. My father turned 80 yesterday and we hosted a birthday party for him at our house for 55 friends and family members, including my brother, who flew in from the west coast on Friday afternoon. We have recently been doing some renovations on a room in our basement and the basement has been in a bit of a mess and all of that needed to be cleaned up before the party. As well, we had grass to cut, gardens to dead head, tidy and weed, etc. My brother helped out with last minute preparations and the party was a great success. We all saw people he had not seen in a long time and a good time was had by all.

Here are a couple of pictures of the quilt, front and back showing some close ups of the quilting, (loopy stars and hearts) which was done by a quilting friend's husband, who has taken up machine quilting as his retirement project.

And here is how much Kaitlyn loves her quilt--she even held onto it when we wrapped her up in it!

Off to the Quilter's!

I finished piecing Kaitlyn's stars and took it to the machine quiters yesterday afternoon. I spent a lot of time agonizing over the layout. It was impossible to get the blocks laid out so the same colours were not beside each other! I decided that I just needed to sew it together and get it off to the quilting people! There is a family baby shower Sunday afternoon so it must be done before then. It is next in line to be quilted so that I can have it back in time to get the binding on before Sunday. This is a busy week at my house, as usual, so I don't anticipate a lot of sewing happening this week.

I am still working on piecing the blocks for the Christmas lights mystery quilt...I will post a picture when they are done.

There is a quilt show in October locally. I would like to put a few quilts into it... I have some that will just need some binding after they get back from the machine quilters so I hope to get them done in time for the show.

My quilting friends and I are hoping to have a QNIC next week sometime. One quilting friend is off at a quilting retreat this week for 3 days...I am so jealous! Working full time really cuts into my sewing time!

My wall

What's on my design wall today? "Kaitlyn's Stars" I finished piecing the blocks this afternoon and I have been playing with them to try to arrange them so that the same fabrics are not beside each other. This is harder than it sounds!

In the middle of sewing merrily along this afternoon, I ran out of bobbin thread but did not notice until several blocks later... I had to go back and resew several borders on again...I am sure none of you have experienced this problem!

I also sewed one block together for my Christmas Lights mystery quilt. I will try to do the rest tonight.
Supper is ready. My husband is on cooking duty tonight.