Hibernating in the sewing room!

I actually started this post a couple of weeks ago, but decided to wait until the quilt in the pictures was finished.  It is cold and snowy today, though- and the wind is blowing the snow across the roads in spots. Basically, normal for western NY in January.

Anyway, this is the time of year I hibernate in the sewing room.  I get more done in the winter months than the rest of the year.  What else have I got to do, but waste time on facebook!



So I pulled one of the many UFO's out of the pile and got to work. ( I layered this one last summer.  Isn't that awful? )   The blocks were made using the instructions from Oh, Frannson.









I decided to do some "doodle quilting", as shown here in Bethany Pease's book.  It's fun, but also kind of tricky to make sure you're putting the different motifs far enough apart.

It also takes a long time to do a whole quilt like this, as it is very dense!




As you may remember, Al built me a nice new sewing table last year (?), but I still have to wad the quilt all up as I work.

So, I wasn't surprised when suddenly it felt thicker, and I stopped to find this.  Fortunately it was just the extra fabric on the edge of the backing.  So I cut it out  and kept going.  I may trim the edges better and see if it will fray enough to remove after washing. 








I got to the border and decided to do this cool spiral vine design.




Mine Isn't as dense as hers.  I'll need to work on that next time.

I got close to the end and suddenly the machine was making a weird sound and the stitches got very tiny.  I stopped to figure out what happened and found a  knot in the quilting thread!  A KNOT!!!!






I don't know what kind of thread it is, but it looks like this














I got the binding on last night, but didn't get a picture of it finished yet.  But it sure feels good to have one less UFO!!!


My "green" topic this time is those little microbeads in skin care products.  Do you love them?  Well think about this-
These microbeads wash down our drains, accumulate in our oceans and, according to a recent study, even flow out into our troubled Great Lakes. There, the tiny plastic beads can be mistaken for fish food. If just eating plastic isn't bad enough for the fish, these beads also soak up toxins like PCBs and pesticides in the water. A recent study of lugworms in the Atlantic, for example, suggests that small pieces of plastic transfer toxins to the creatures that eat them. In other words, our exfoliating scrubs could be turning into pretty poison pills, little floating points of toxicity for fish.
Read the full article here.
It just points to the fact that we have to be ever aware of what we are buying, and placing into the environment.
Fortunately, unilever has decided to remove them.  Let's hope others follow suit!

I am grateful for:
The friends who lift my spirits when I need it.
The sweet kittens I got to cuddle at the shelter the other day.
My ten extra minutes in my quilted cocoon every morning (thanks to the snooze button)
The playoffs have been great so far this year!
The furnace is working again and it was a minor repair.