Millie in Action

Despite it being a long holiday weekend, I have been trying to quilt on this client quilt an hour and a half each morning before my troops are up.  Today I got a little extra time and was able to complete all of the ditching of the appliques.  This is Aunt Millie's Garden, and my client has only used 9 of the 12 blocks in the design (thankfully!!).  I spent a whopping 8 hours ditching the many appliques.  Yea you read that correctly...Eight hours of stitching monofilament.  This is a sweet pattern, but it really doesn't leave a decent amount of space around the appliques for much quilting.  If I made it, I'd make each block at least 1-2" larger on all 4 sides.  Never the less, I am still trying to work a creative quilting scheme into the layout.  You'll know if I succeeded  by the end of this week!

It will be good to have the kids go back to school tomorrow.  Then it is only four weeks until the next vacation hits us.  I'm not sure when the vacations became such a drag.  Surely, sometime in my life I loved them.  Not so anymore.  Mind you, it's not really been so bad having my kids home and hanging around (if you can get accustomed to the many "I'm boreds", but they take a huge hit on my quilting work at a time when I am truly swamped.  Actually, it's the eating holidays and Christmas that I just loathe.  Easter Bunnies are cute.  Fourth of July has a good outdoor spread.  But Thanksgiving is like a cesspool of too much cooking, too many opinions, not enough caring and listening, lying, people being people, deceptions revealed, and all the things that are so much part of a big family it can make you rather run for the hills than try to enjoy a family turkey day.  Next year may well be different.  I just don't need celebrations if that's what they are.  Days like that just make me dread the next holiday.

For all interested, my cat Sally came home on Tuesday after spending 4 nights at the vet.  She got IV fluids, and several xrays, all revealing "suspicious" items but not confirmed items in her intestines.  When she began to eat again on Sunday afternoon, after nearly 5-1/2 days not eating, she began her road to recovery.  Nothing un-natural has come out of her, so it makes us wonder what really was wrong.  I've purged the kids' rooms of potentially dangerous things, in hopes of avoiding a repeat $627 experience!  This is putting a severe financial burden on this Christmas, which coupled with my existing dislike of the holiday, isn't helping matters.  But we are all happy to have her home.  I'm good only purchasing the essential Christmas gifts so long as we aren't burying my kids's cat this week.