Hey! I Quilted Something

I've been agonizing over how to quilt my Serengeti top for weeks now.  I was seriously frozen with indecision.  And that meant that I couldn't move to get anything done, related or not.  Yesterday I decided enough is enough.  It's time to start getting stuff done.  Other than my guild swap stuff, I haven't finished anything since JUNE! I did make that giant churn dash quilt and backing in July, but haven't touched it since.  

 Anyway, this quilt has no intended recipient.  It is a crib size.  Baby quilts need to be washed a lot, so I decided that just doing random loops all over was good enough.  I did want to do a little pattern on the flying geese, and I decided to load the quilt sideways so that I could do the pattern all in one pass instead of scrolling back and forth.
What I neglected to remember when I loaded the quilt backing was that although I had ample room top to bottom, the sides were very tight.  I had started with my leader grips above the take up bar like usual, which uses 4-6 inches of the backing fabric.  So I was quilting along, and then I got to the last bit.  Oh no!  Not enough backing!  Ugh!  I had enough batting though, so I unhooked everything, clamped only the batting to the bar, and pinned the backing to the batting to hold it in place.  It was a tense few minutes, but I got it done.  Luckily this is a quilt pattern without much piecing, so if I need to trim off a little extra on one side, it will still turn out okay.  However, if I would have been using my brain, this would not have even been an issue.
I clamped the batting onto the leader to try to finish.
Can you see the pin under the first two circles in the picture above?
That's where the edge of the quilt top is!
It's hard to see, but I pinned the backing onto the batting to hold it in place.

Here you can see how little fabric I had left on this side.
I didn't quilt all the way to the edge of the top, so there's even less than what shows above.
And on this side, I had tons of extra fabric.
I also finally finished this little frog cross stitch (pattern by Sewing Seed on Etsy) that I started in July.  This is for my son, who loves frogs.

In other sewing news, I signed up for the Woppet bucket swap on Instagram and as usual I have none of the fabrics that my partner likes.  Funny how that always happens to me. I spent a few days agonizing over what to pick and finally just made a decision and ordered a bunch of stuff yesterday.  I hope it's a good decision.  I feel a lot of pressure to make sure I pick the right things when I do swaps.  I want the person to like it and I do spend a lot of time trying to figure out what they would like based on their social media information.  Hopefully it's good, but you really never know.

 In sewing room news, we finished leveling the floor and I got to put the first coat of paint on the walls.  Right now I'm not sure if I love it.  It is supposed to be the same color paint as my bedroom, but for some reason it looks really yellow in the sewing room.  And I am not a fan of yellow.  I'm not sure if it's because of a reflection of the green tape on the ceiling, or using a halogen work light which is really yellow, or they changed the tint mix or what.  The plan right now is to get the lights wired so that we can see what the room will look like with the actual lighting.  If I still don't like it then I will need to get a different color of paint for the second coat.  Yippee.
I ordered the flooring for the room and should have that by next week.  I chose Mannington's AduraMax luxury vinyl plant in Sundance Gunstock color way.  I still need to order Formica sheets and edging for the counter.  The cabinet boxes are built, but I don't think the doors are done yet. We will have to install and paint the trim after the cabinets are in, and the wiring needs to be finished.  I also need to paint the two closets that are in the room, but they need a little touch up to the drywall before I start.

 I found this moth in the yard a while ago.  I think it's a Luna Moth, and it was only there for a few minutes.
Last year we had virtually no monarchs, and we've seen just a few this year.  Our lower flower garden sprouted loads of milkweed this year.  Even though they are in really random places, I left them because of the monarchs.  The other night, after seeing lots of social media posts about monarch caterpillars, I checked my plants.  Look what I found!  There were various sizes of caterpillars along with aphids (gross) and several other bugs (also gross).  So hopefully we are helping to maintain or repopulate our monarch population.

Oh, and I was so excited to see that the deer left this rose of Sharon alone enough that it actually has a flower on it.  Usually they eat off the majority of the blossoms from my plants before they even open. I think this is the first time this bush has flowered.


FLL starts tonight.  It tends to eat a lot of our time, but most of our team are returning this year, so hopefully that will make it a bit easier than last year.  My husband started class 9 of 10 for his MBA this week too, and that for sure is the biggest time drain.
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