Ma'm, Put Your Hands in the Air...

"Good Morning!  It's Sunday, July 9th.  My name is Jane Pauley, and this is Good Morning America!"

What?!?  July 9th?  How did that happen?  The quilt show is only one month away!  I'd better start finishing some quilts!

And so it began.  Quilt Central.  One month of focusing and no playing allowed.  If I wandered from my goal, I was afraid I'd hear heavy footsteps, and then:  "Ma'm, put your hands in the air and step away from that machine."  "But officer, I just wanted to try this one block...."

Well, the quilt show launched yesterday, 

Photo courtesy The Cuddle Quilter
To see more, go HERE!

and I'm pleased to say, I made it. I walked in on Wednesday morning with a laundry basket chuck-a-lucka-full.  Never thought to stop and document this in photographs.  Even my blogging instincts were quelled while I quilted.  And quilted.  And quilted.  If you know me, you'll understand that I am a very pokey quilter.  If it takes you a week, it takes me a month!

I brought ten pieces, but 6 of them were baby to crib size quilts.  Only four were of any substantial size.  Three were UFOs, only one was new this summer.

This is my new quilt, Preppy the Whale.  My goal was to make 72 whales.  When I reached 36, I said, "Enough is enough."  I sewed them together, then waited for weeks to find just the right backing.  The whales are all Free Spirit Solids, but the back is Cotton and Steel.

A winning combination!

Now, I hate to admit this, but by the time I had this all together, I was  d-o-n-e! So I called my local long armer, arranged to have it edge to edged (which I'd have done, anyway), and practically threw it at her when I dropped it off!  "Take this!  I'm sick of working on it!"  Lucky for me, her machine was free at that moment and it was returned to me just a few days later!  Thanks ever so much, Colleen!

Also included in my laundry basket full of goodies were these two quilts, both UFOs.

This quilt was a 'to go' project 8 years ago.  Thought it was time to finish it up!  The back is a black batik with yellow to red dots.  Very pretty.

Sometimes, what we see in our mind's eye isn't what we get.  Such is the case with this quilt.  But it still came out okay.  Different.

A little tip:
I was cleaning up threads from the back of a finished top....and remembered a suggestion that a quilter had written into a magazine.  I cut a little piece of a batting scrap and pinned it to the end of my ironing board.  It was a great way to collect all my little thread pieces in one place, eliminating a messy clean up when I was finished!

And last but certainly not least, another scrumptious recipe to share.  Sheila made this for our Round Robin Exchange, and I couldn't get enough of it.  She was kind enough to send me a link to the recipe.

Butternut Squash and Cranberry Quinoa Salad