Projects Finished in October

Sledding Santa has been added to the "done pile" of cross stitch ornaments. I now need to add a wool felt backing to the 13 ornaments I finished this year.  Hopefully I can figure out a place to display them that is safe from my cat...he loves these ornaments too!

I finished the brown bag mystery quilt top. The colors are off in this photo. The blue is more turquoise and the red is a hot pink. I used the Marti Michell templates recommended in the instructions and they really made getting nice points pretty easy.

And I finished piecing the Aurora Nights kit I won at the quilt retreat. I knew it would go together very quickly with all those large areas of gradation fabrics. 

I'm making good progress on the October Breakfast club project, Pumpkin Seeds.

I am going with batiks of course and I had a dark background fabric that just jumped out at me when I was deciding fabrics to use for this project.

I am waiting for some back ordered thread to start my next quilting project for my mid-arm quilting machine. So frustrating. But I have a small project so once that thread gets here it should go fast. 

October Quilt Retreat

I am a winner.

At the Material Girls retreat I won the door prize, Aurora Nights quilt kit.

All the fabrics are gorgeous gradations. I am thinking I will cut this out and have it on hand to start working on since it looks like it will be a simple quilt as the fabrics do the work of creating a unique design.

I started off the retreat by getting the binding done on a Halloween wall hanging.

I brought the Baby Honu UFO and got all the blocks sewn together and the borders added.

This quilt is going to be a challenge to quilt with heads, tails and feet that are not attached to the top.

I also got half of the blocks sewn for a blue and white version of a quilt pattern I made last year from the Moda Bakeshop, Sky Full of Stars. 

My favorite part of any quilt gathering is show and tell. I got to share my Sparklers quilt. 

As I started to unpack when I got home, Eli claimed a spot in the middle of my mess. I don't even think it was a comfortable place. I guess he missed me.

Termination Dust

We have some "Alaska sayings," you don't hear anywhere else. One is Termination Dust which refers to snow showing up on the tops of mountains and moving farther down the mountain as winter approaches.

I've got a few leaves to rake...hopefully that will happen before the first snow fall. So far just a few days with temperatures dipping below freezing. 

I finished cross stitching Amazon Santa, in the middle of this year's Sandra Cozzolino series, "South American Santas." All so very cute. You can see why I am addicted to making her designs. 

I have finished quilting, "Sparklers." I loaded the quilt on my frame, August 25th. 

The next few photos are mainly for me to refer to when looking for ideas to quilt future quilts.

I had three different stars in the quilt and tried to quilt them each a little differently.

Red Star.

Blue Star

White Star

Trying to quilt details in a printed batik is a subtle effect...but it does work.

I mark dark colors with regular white chalk sharpened with a regular pencil sharpener that has a larger opening for fat pencils. Below are my two favorite rulers used on this quilt. 

I marked the circles and little hash marks for angled straight lines going to the center of the arcs.  Those straight horizontal lines in the body of the quilt are from my basting lines. Those will disappear when all the quilting is done.

Another detail photo to help me.

And the result.

Here's the only critter photo I have taken in the past few weeks, Eli at the top of his cat tower. He could use a Maine-Coon-sized cat tower. Somehow he curls into the top for afternoon naps.