Slow going, but doing okay

There have been some down days here at Wazoo while I regroup from the recent breakdown of the Millie. Mr Wazoo got her up and running with the new carriage and I quilted my son's quilt and a customer quilt with only minor hiccups.

The finished quilt for my son and daughter in law.

Panto: African Samba

Marbled backing

Customer Star Wars quilt

Panto: Meander stars

Star Wars on the back, too!

We sent the quilt off to Wisconsin, and hopefully it will arrive today. The Star Wars quilt had the thickest batting I have ever worked on (except for the alpaca batting...that's another story) but went along without incident. I have the next quilt loaded and in the works. It is really big (does that surprise you? I didn't think so) and each row takes 25 minutes to chug across. I should have it done today. 

I cut up the last silk sari and have the blocks backed with stabilizer, constructed and trimmed up. At the end of the day yesterday, I arranged them on the design wall. There will be some tweaking, because of the difference in color when the silk is turned and the purple weft is more prominent.

The border of the sari wil become the inner border of the quilt.

I got a few batiks that are very similar in color to the weft in the silk for the accents in the quilt. The entire thing is half square triangles, so it was easily constructed.

Lots of sliver trimming done to square up the blocks.

Here are the blocks on the design wall. See the difference in color in the backgrounds? The pinwheels have the embroidered fabric from one end of the sari. The other background is the main part of the sari that has small diamond shaped embroidery scattered on it.

All the stitch in the ditch is done on the big circles quilt. Now, I have the backgrounds to do before moving it to the Millie for the motifs in the circles. Unfortunately, there is only one of me and I can't sew the silk project and quilt on the circle quilt background at the same time.  I'll get the wall hanging top finished, then begin on the circle quilt while doing the other quilt on the Millie. 

This quilt is so beautiful! I am itching to get going on the actual quilting.

In the middle of all this, I need to be on a Zoom call with the board of the quilt guild to discuss what's next in this up-ended world of Covid restrictions. We haven't met since March. I just cancelled the July speaker and class, and am looking ahead at the schedule to see who will be disappointed in August.

It looks like our trip to Texas won't happen in July since they are having a major up-tick in the number of virus cases there. My Dad is there, and my brother is, too, staying at my sister's house while she and her hubby take care of family business in Wisconsin. I thought it would be a good time to go there because I would get to visit with my brother for a few days. As with everything else, it's a wait and see thing.

On Saturday, we defied death and travelled to Chattanooga to get a couple of feet for the Bernina. I wanted to speak to them about the Handi Quilter longarms, too. If I can sell Millie, I would be able to replace her with a simpler machine  with in-person customer support offered. I have been thinking about it since the first breakdown in March. We'll see how that goes.

My friend, Birdie, has been sticking close to his wife while she sits on the nest. When I try to take his picture, he flies over to another part of the garden, so it was quite a coup to get this one blurry shot of him on the bird feeder crook. The nest is on top of our floodlights  for the back yard. This is the third time they have had it there, and I expect babies to be chirping soon! Tiki man continues to mock me...tongue out and eyes squeezed shut. He is such a prankster...