Puttering Along with an Assortment of fun stitchings

On this dreary and rainy May morning, I'll start this post with a sneak peek of the back of my quilt. It has been hard to photograph accurately because of dim inside lighting and rain & clouds outside. The back is actually the same dark navy blue and plum that are on the front. I just took the picture looking into the light so as to capture the texture. I am still contemplating redoing a few things before I bind it, but as time goes by, I am becomming more and more accepting of how it looks. Last week, I ditch outline stitched every single applique. And there were A LOT!
And an easy afternoon sew for my daughter, who was destroying and soiling one of the more decorative pillows in her room - one that does not remove for washing. I actually quilted this on my Singer, and was painfully aware of how long it has been since I FMQ'd by moving the fabric! YEOW - it was hard. She's all about pink and princesses and fairies, so when I found this fabric for $3 at fabric.com, I could not resist.

And one very large queen quilt I did for a local lady. I'm not a huge fan of the CW fabrics (or maybe they are just overly traditional/Americana), plus they all had a pattern which made doing detailed quilting harder. For example, I started to feather the tan (tan print) setting triangles but couldn't for the life of me see where I was going. I picked it out and did something I hate to do - stipple! Stippling is hideous quilting. I really loathe it, but some places just are not worth the trouble or loss of eye sight to do something differently.

For whatever it is worth, she loved the quilt and left another for me to do. It's got about 1 row left on the panto and will come off the frame today. I had not done pantos in quite some time and felt like a little semi-mindless quilting. That sounds bad, but seriously, some quilts look just great quilted with a nice all-over. And the 2 that I just finished doing it fit the bill for perfectly. I need to knock off some of the smaller, easier tops I have right now because I have several larger and more detailed jobs coming. The business has been very active this month. A nice change of pace...just hope I can manage to keep up once the boys are out of school in 6 weeks.

Here's a little baby quilt that has been awaiting it's owner for a couple weeks now... (hint!)

And...remember these fabrics? Well, the dress is nearing completion. Thought I'd show a peek at the smocking first.

Have a good rest of the week, and pray for no rain this weekend. Not so for our Saturday forecast, and bad news since I am supposed to be doing a garage sale that day :-(( Bad garage sale translates to "no sewing $$"!

The "thread basket" part of my MQX prize arrived today! I've never used YLI thread before (being quite partial to Superior!) so this will be fun to test out. I'm not sure where that bright variagated orange will find a home, but the others are all very usable!