Sigh ...

Hi friends ... trying to keep myself busy this week ... I just feel exhausted all the time!  Haven't been sleeping very well ... it may be because it has been hot as can be here lately!  We had a bad spell of a couple of weeks, then some nice normal weather for a few days, and now we are back in the middle of a week of 90 plus humidity ... have I mentioned before that we don't get humidity here?  Have I mentioned before that this is normally the perfect climate here ... am I whining?  Yes I am!  I know I am and to all you that don't live here I do apologize for whining, because I know it's a lot worse other places.  Okay, enough of my whining about weather ... there seems to be the summer cold thing traveling around ... my hubby brought it home last week, and he has been coughing and blowing his nose.  Now I'm fighting it and that could have something to do with me feeling tired as well.

But it doesn't matter how you feel, the sewing must go on, right?!  I've been putting together a halloween broken dish block quilt ... I got the inside put together:

I like it ... I made it really scrappy with whatever I had.  I tried to do a little color arranging, but I had the most difficult time chaining the blocks together, so everything got messed up!  Every time I tried to chain the entire blocks together in rows, the whole mess came out a tangle ... eventually I just gave up and wherever it fell, it fell!  As you can see when you don't use the same colors in a block, you kind of lose the "broken dish" look.  But I still like it ... I don't have as much halloween fabric as I thought ... oh, I might need to buy more!!  I thought I had quite a bit, but when I started cutting for these blocks, I realized most of what I have is fat quarters.  I had a hard time picking fabric to be the "solid", as I had so much pattern in the rest of the quilt.  So I chose a brown, and found several different fabrics that were in that range.  I think it works ... now I just really need some punch of color in the border.  Instead of doing a solid border, I think I'm going to use a bunch of different strips and make it very colorful.  Not sure what my outside border will be ... I don't have a huge amount of anything, and I am determined not to buy any fabric for this quilt.  I had an idea that a flying geese block in the inner border would be really spectacular, but I decided to scrap that idea because it was too much work.  I'll let you know how I do!

Here's another quilt I did last week ... this one is one of my friend's from work ... I know she usually likes a really small pattern close together, but I didn't want to do too much close stitching over this beautiful embroidery:

Cute, huh?  It's a block of the month from last year I believe ... very fun to do.  I used YLI in the top and Glide in the bobbin.  I really like the way the YLI looks on the quilt and I love the stitches it makes, but it really sheds ... a lot.  It sheds more than any other cotton thread I've used ... I put it aside for a while and didn't use it, but I thought this was the best color, and it's a good thread.  I just make sure I wipe off the area above the needle when the fuzz starts collecting too much ... that way it doesn't wind up falling onto the quilt.

See what I mean about not wanting to put too much stitching over these cute little snow people, houses and trees?

In the midst of last week's quilting, I had to go to the dermatologist for a checkup ... I had a basal cell removed about three months ago ... the scar is healing really well, and you can't even see it.  I was expecting to get in and out of there pretty quick ... hurray ...

Look what he did to me?  Sheesh ... didn't like the way these two little bits looked on my face so he biopsied two more places.  Sure hope they are nothing ... that Mose surgery they did was really nifty, but expensive!  I'd prefer not to have any more surgeries, please!  I must mention this to my dermatologist ....