It must have been a hard winter

My quilting business has always been a bit slow, but there have always been enough quilts to keep me going.  Considering that I still work full time, that’s been fine with me.  I’m never more than a month or two out, and I’m happy with the additional income.  Suddenly, for the past week, I seem to get a call a day for quilting!  One day I got two calls!  Very strange.  I am suddenly booked out to the middle of the summer.  I think I like this.  If things get busier, I may just have to quit my day job and start quilting full time.  Nah, I need to get to that full retirement pension, but I now think I may be a little more comfortable, knowing that I will have enough additional income when the time does come to retire.  The pension will pay the mortgage and all my bills (of which there are few), but that darned health insurance is the biggy that has me wondering if it’s wise to retire.  I had thought I would possibly need to get a part-time job, perhaps in a store or a bank, but I think I may be able to do without that.  Ah, life feels pretty good today.

I’ll finish and ship my little quilt to MQX this week and then load a huge custom quilt.  I’m a bit nervous about this one.  The customer was referred to me by Ronda, and I know I can’t do quite the wonderful job Ronda does, but I’m gonna give it a whirl!  😉

Wishing a great day to all on this Oregon day filled with liquid sunshine.

Nothing inspires like last minute panic

Well, MQX is right around the corner, and I got the fabrics for the Pet charity challenge long ago.  Actually, I knew what I would make with those fabrics even before they arrived, but did I do it?  No!  I have been in such a funk this winter — I don’t know if it’s the weight loss, the sadness experienced by so many friends this year (it’s been a terrible one, hasn’t it?), or just that I’m getting old and curmudgeonly.  Anyway, I finally began to whip my cat quilt together last week and finished it on Saturday night at about 8:00.  I had to take the picture, check and entry form out to the post office by 10:00 to have it postmarked on the 1st of March (entry deadline), and I made it with about an hour to spare.  Getting the lighting right for a picture, especially of an unquilted quilt, is difficult, but at least you can see what the quilt will basically look like.  I need to get it on the machine (maybe next weekend, I have a customer who needs their quilt first) and then there will be some embellishments.  It is called, “If I Had Two Mice, I’d Give You One.”

The center is from a pattern by Janet Kime called “Tryst” in her book It’s Raining Cats and Dogs.  I enlarged the cats looking at the moon, then added the dogtooth border and then the larger one in the themed fabric (Bad Kitty by Michael Miller).  It looks a bit wonky hanging there, but it is actually a fairly flat quilt.  I hope I don’t mess it up when I quilt it.