Lavender and Yellow Baby Quilt

Finally, an actual quilt on this quilting blog. lol A few months ago, a friend of the Blanketeers donated a completed baby quilt top, along with plenty of batting and coordinating fabric to finish it off. I volunteered my services and here it is, all done after sitting all sandwiched and ready to quilt for weeks and weeks.
It was only 30" by 40", so it was quick and easy to stipple. As you can see, the back matches the binding. I tried doing a single fold binding again, this time making it 2.25" wide. It was still pretty tight and I had to pull pretty hard to get it to overlap properly. 2.5" would probably be better. I think I'll use 2.75" on the Minkee backed quilts; they are very thick.

I just love my new camera. Look at all those stippling nooks and crannies! 8-) The colors are very accurate too. I can fix the aperture wide open for lots of natural light. My mini-tripod works great when I have something to stand it on.

Well, I got my December finish done, and I'll have something to turn in at the next Blanketeer meeting too. All in all, a productive few days. 8-)

More Siggies

I got two new international siggies. This lovely one is from Elfriede (Elfie) Novotny in Vienna, Austria. I'm glad my new camera is working so well, otherwise I don't think you would have been able to make out the delicate spiderweb background and the spider would have been out of context. lol

This cool kitty is from Gert van Raalten in Utrecht, Netherlands. I think Gert may be the first male with whom I have swapped siggies. There just aren't that many male quilters. The kitty's name is Arnie, just like my "nephew" the golden doodle. Gert recognized me from this blog; how cool is that?

This next siggy is very special because it is from my sister, Cindi (Arnie's "Mom"). It is a picture of her... sigh... tattoo; and a very lovely one it is too. Now Cindi doesn't sew, but she sent me this fabric, which coordinates exceptionally well, so I put it together for her (well, for me, but you know what I mean!) And no, Cindi is not confused as to the year. She drew the center in 2008, then lost it for a year. 8-)

This next siggy is from my sister-in-law, Denise. We last saw Denise and her family a year ago on Thanksgiving, when we all met in Shreveport for Turkey. This year we missed them because we were up in Green Bay visiting Cindi and the rest of my family.

Carina (age 6) is Denise's daughter. She drew this lovely flower for her Aunt Susan, and I learned that the words "on point" have absolutely no meaning to a child. 8-) I put these two siggies together as well. I really like the butterflies for Carina, and her Mom's fabric coordinates, which I think it appropriate!

I'm pretty pleased with my new Cannon Rebel. I set up a little tripod on my ironing board and played with all the settings until I got the results I liked. I think I'm getting lots more detail than I did with my old point & shoot camera.

This is what we woke up to on Christmas morning. It was beautiful, but very icy. Everywhere the sun shone was clear in few hours, but despite temperatures well above freezing, shady spots still have snow two days later.


I could not believe how warm it was in the sun. I played with my camera wearing just a sweater for 20 minutes without getting chilled. There was no breeze. After the blizzardy gales of Christmas Eve, it seemed very quiet.

The delicate nandinas wore their winter coats well.

So did the sturdy boxwoods.

Merry Christmas from Great Big Giant Santa!

It's a bird! It's a plane! No! It's GREAT BIG GIANT SANTA!!!! My buddy, Joe P, got all excited on the phone at work in early December. His daughter had located a GBGS and wanted to know if she should buy it. Joe told me how they used to have a GBGS, but it wore out and they could never find a 12 foot replacement, only a dinky little 6 footer instead. Needlesss to say, she got the green light, and GBGS was on the move. Joe promised me that it could be seen from down the block. lol I wanted to try some night photography with my new camera, so here he is, in all his Christmas glory... Great Big Giant Santa!

Along with (apparently) Dumbo, his Christmas sidekick.