I've finished the quilting on Anita's Arrows and taken it off the frame.  I'm pretty happy with the quilting.  Some of it is free motion.  I'm able to do the vine/leaf/curlique quite easily.  For the ditch work I use a Line Tamer ruler, and for the even curves in the petals in the four-patch blocks I use a semi-circular ruler.  I've gotten much better about not wandering off the rulers.

Now I'm worrying about the binding.  You can see from this photo that the quilt is not square.  I had to choose between keeping the points on the border squares and making the quilt square.  Since I'm addicted to points, I went with the uneven edge.

However, to get 1/4 inch for the seam at each point, I have a tiny margin for the seam between the points.  The quilting pulled the top in between the points, so I will have (I hope) 1/8 inch of the top with 1/4 inch of batting and backing in the seam.  I've got the binding cut, but I'm expecting real trouble sewing it on.

Distractions!  Distractions!  Besides too many non-quilting irons in the fire, I keep adding quilting projects, so my Christmas house is languishing.

My guild had a workshop last Sunday with Linda M. Poole.  Yet again, the topic was WAY outside my comfort zone, so, of course, I signed up.  What fun!  It was like playing with a really cool coloring book for a day.  We started with line drawings of a sweet bird.  We used ink pencils, InkFusion textile medium, and brushes to create a water-colored look.  Then we used a simple fabric marker, the kind I remember using to write my daughter's name on all of her camp clothes, to outline the colors.

Here is my finished painted bird.

And here are the tools from the kit.

I'm thinking of using this as another mini for my guild's mini-raffle at our show in October.  I might try quilting swirls in the sky background or maybe take my first shot at McTavishing.  For the bird, I'm thinking of following the black lines with black stitching.  But first, I have to free up Big Mama, my longarm machine.

I haven't yet mentioned that I am working on a UFO on my longarm, too.  You may recognize some of the fabrics as scraps left from the quilt I use as the banner for this blog.  I just loved these colors and patterns, so I decided to do a quilt from a Craftsy class with Anita Grossman Solomon.  The design is called "Anita's Arrows."  I'll show you the whole thing when it's done.

I have a white sofa.  Don't ask me why I bought it when my daughter was a baby and we had two kittens.  Oh, maybe it's because I was completely crazed at the time and doing irrational things.  Anyway, our indoor/outdoor cat, Dewey, likes to sleep on it and eat mice and moles on it, so it's always covered with an old blanket, thus destroying the beauty of the living room.  I've been using this quilt to practice my longarm quilting, and it will officially be "Dewey's Quilt" and cover the white sofa.  (What the heck.  I'll wash it, right?)

Even from a distance, you can see that the quilting is nothing to write home about.

With any luck, my next blog entry will be about a finish - of something, anything.