What I did on my Thanksgiving Vacation...

My Aunt Dot is visiting her daughter, Sebra, in Dacula, GA for the holiday, and yesterday Al and I drove out to visit.  As we walked up to the front door, Al said, "I don't think this is the right house."  I was thinking the same thing, because I remembered steps and this house did not have any.  I said, "Why's that?" and he pointed to the "McCain/Palin" bumper sticker on one of the cars in the driveway!  What was really funny is that he had his "Obama 08" cap on!

I've gotten a lot of quilting done over the last four days. I have pieced all but the outer ring on the Amazon Star.  I'm pretty certain I can finish piecing this over Christmas vacation, which would be a good thing to have at least one project finished this year!  Here is what one of the completed star points looks like:

Much prettier in person, and I'm getting excited about this piece!  I would love to enter it in the East Cobb show in September, but I can't remember their max size.  This might be too big.

I'm very pleased with the way the points are sharp as a tack and all line up and so far, it's lying pretty flat.  Once I start putting all those Y-seams together, it will be a different story, but so far, so good!

Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often. ~Johnny Carson

Happy Thanksgiving!

Things have been a little bit crazy at work...we're in the midst of a merger, and there are so many deadlines and not enough time. One of the best things about the merger, though, is that for the first time in my professional career, I have the day after Thanksgiving off without having to take a personal vacation day.  I worked at Bank of America for 28 years, and banks are not allowed to be closed four days in a row (rule instituted after The Depression to prevent runs on banks.  The idea was to give people access to their money), we barely had Thanksgiving Day off at Scient, and it wasn't a holiday at Watson Wyatt.  I will do some work, because I haven't done expenses in about four months, and my office looks like a disaster, but it will be good to get up when I feel like getting up in the morning!

So today, I did quilting in between cooking dinner.  I am not going to work on anything else until I finish this project.  This is the Amazon Star that I started at Asilomar last March in Judy Niemeyer's class...I worked on the center Mariner's Compass when I went to the retreat at Toccoa last month, and I've just finished the outer star points today.

Which one of these is not like the other one?

One of the reasons I'm so slow is that on repetitive pieces like this, I sew them one at a time.  I've found that I have a short attention span, and when I'm chain piecing, I don't focus (today I was watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade) and I end up making mistakes and having to unsew.  Even with unsewing, I didn't do tooo badly with these star points, and only had to redo the one.




Here's what I've finished so far:

This is laid out on the floor of the pool room, since it is already too big for my design wall.  Finished size is 104 x 104, which is where the name "Amazon Star" comes from.  When I find my camera, I'll get a better picture posted.  The colors are really pretty on this, and they're not coming through on my iPhone photo.

Sorry I haven't posted in ages.  One of my New Year's resolutions is to post to my blog at least once a week. 



May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey be plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have nary a lump.
May your yams be delicious,
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner,
Stay off your thighs!
~Author Unknown