I enjoyed Busy Bees yesterday morning, as always. Louise demo-ed this appliquilt project, where you applique and quilt at the same time.

Seems like a fairly easy process, otherwise known as 'even Bobbi can do it.'  

Now "all" I have to do <g> is choose a line drawing to trace.

Of course I brought some of my Havasu basket winnings for Show & Tell, as well as the almost-finished placemats.  All garnered approval from the ladies.

Naturally I was not the only one who brought holiday gifts still 'in the works' but which will be at their new homes before our next meeting. Here are Sharon's turkeys, pinned and ready for her to quilt. She noted that she was 'reminded' to use the Irish Chain pattern after Patty's demo last month.

  As promised at last month's meeting, when I put out the call for selvages, Joanne brought her big box of selvages to this meeting. "Guess" what I spent yesterday afternoon doing, instead of the bindings for the placemats... 

So even though I 'wasted' the afternoon sorting through them, I am now the proud owner of a plump bag of book titles to use on my (someday) bookshelf quilt.

Jan and Sharon followed me home for some Wandering Jew cuttings, though even after gifting them generous bagsful I still need to cut the plants back even more.  (Would love to find more folks who want some, instead of just tossing them in the trash.) The cuttings that Jan got a while back are doing great, and sounds like she's definitely enjoying them.

Cara & Zenna came over in the last afternoon since I'd invited them for a "last chance" for a while. The pooches have become besties, and were again beyond thrilled to see each other.  They zoomed around in Back 40 (for the first time) while Cara got a mini-tutorial in the Art of Irrigation.

There will be a blood moon lunar eclipse (almost total, 97%) tonight.  

Alex is going to do irrigation for us (our crappy time is 12:26-2:26 am) so he will get to witness the eclipse during its fullest glory at 2:02 am.  Bonus for him!

Up too early this morning, around 4:30. After coffee I promptly got to work on the first binding, removing the walking foot after doing the free-motion on the placemats.  It didn't take long <g> for me to realize that it would be "easier" to sew if I raised the feed dogs back up.  

My next wake-up call was that it's also easier to sew the binding onto the placemat IF I have thread in the bobbin.  (Won 'bobbin chicken' piecing the strips.)

Sewing the tails together took much longer than it should <sigh>  since my first pinning resulted in an unwanted twist.  

Then there was a date with Jack because part of the tail got folded under.  

However now it is ready for the hand-sewing, so there's no excuse for not finishing it while I wait for Tom at the doctor.   

Since I'm skipping the hot tub this morning there may even be time, after breakfast, to at least start making the binding for the second one.