Irish Chain Finish!

I have no idea what I've been doing but it certainly hasn't been blogging. Some of my time has been wrapped up in The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. I got it from the library on Thursday and then Saturday I got a message that Diane Gabaldon's new book was also available for me to pick up. YIKES two 500+ page books coming in at the same time. And both have reserves on them beyond me so I knew I would only have them for 2 weeks. HELP. So I spent quite a bit of time over the weekend reading The Lost Symbol. I found the sheer amount of information in it amazing. I learned all sorts of new things. The mystery part -- well, not all that great. But the other stuff held my interest. A lot of what he included was factual.

I've got a paperback going now. I will be picking up the Gabaldon book on Thursday. Another long book but I've been sucked into all her previous books so I am sure I'll be into this new book next weekend.

This is the Irish Chain quilt that I finished last week. For some reason whenever I take a quilt photo Raggs stands in front of it and poses. (Have I taken that

many pictures of Raggs?) Also wanted everyone to see the state of the trees around here. My back yard trees haven't turned more than yellow but trees around the area are various shades of green, yellows, reds, browns. Fall colors are doing there thing here. Anyway, it was a mystery quilt presented by Marge at Mysteries for Relay. Each mystery costs a $5 donation to American Cancer Society. There is another mystery coming up the first week of November if you'd like to join in the fun. Marge uses this site to raise funds for the American Cancer Society. So, if you'd like to do a mystery quilt Marge's are well written and lots of fun to do. On this quilt when I got to the part where we were laying this out I told Marge how much I liked it. And, I knew I would never have made an Irish Chain knowing what it was. Yet I really like this quilt -- but it is a gift to a friend so I won't be keeping it. I liked this because I'm pretty sure all of the fabric came from my stash. And, if it didn't, I only bought the brown. (oh, where oh where has my memory gone, oh where, oh where did it go? . . . ) Everytime I talk about Mysteries for Relay I do a sales job too. So, those of you have heard this sorry for the repeat but it is for a good cause. For those of you who have joined or are planning on joining thank you so much for supporting this worth while effort.

Here's what I've been working on most

recently. The pattern is called "The Witch Is In." I've still got a couple of bats and the letters to stitch on. And, don't you just love my big board! I do. I have room for the whole wall hanging on this. Nothing is hanging off the edges.

As I have been machine buttonholing this I've been using phone book pages for the stabilizer. I have fancy stabilizer that actually washes out but it gets expensive or at least it costs money! However, I've read from many of the blogs I read that the gals use phone book pages especially for string blocks. I've been against it because of the ink transfer I thought would happen. So, I grabbed a piece of white scrap and rubbed it against the page. Not much came off. I was really surprised. So I used pages under each design element. Because it is so thin it pulls off easily. After doing these parts I noticed my machine bed was a little dirty. Hum, the big question was -- was it dirty before I started or not? I hadn't looked. I cleaned it off and closed up for the night.

Today's plan is to get the letters on and the bats. So I'm heading up now to quilt. I've already put dinner in the crock pot and now blogging for the first time in 5 days it's time to get going.

Happy quilting all!