Three dinosaurs, two Christmas quilts, and a very nasty stomach bug

Okay, it has been an interesting few weeks.   It started off fine.  I planned to get all the quilts done, then start cleaning house before Christmas.   Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans going awry.  Mine sure did.

The Sunday before Thanksgiving I was at home, alone because husband was on a trip to Michigan.  I was happily working on a little dinosaur quilt for a nice lady.  I had come up with this idea to trace the dinosaur pattern onto tear away stabilizer, stitch through it, then remove the stabilizer.  Yeah, well, that didn't work out so well, but more about that in a minute.

Anyway, on the peaceful Sunday night the phone rang.  It was late, around 9:30 or 10:00.  It was the wife of my youngest son calling.  She was in a panic. He had been injured at work and they had taken him to the hospital.  I knew it would take me 45 minutes to get there, so I left the house immediately.  By the time I got there a CAT scan had been completed and a doctor had been called.   To make a long story short, he had a head injury with swelling, but no brain damage.  He also had a fracture of his orbital socket and his left eye was injured.   Even with all these injuries, the stupid hospital staff decided to send him home, rather than keeping him in the hospital.  I was not happy, and I made sure it was known.  Because Susan was already so shaken up and worried, we decided that they should come stay at our house for a few days, until the swelling went down and Josh was up and about.  So, my week of being alone and working on quilts took an odd turn.  Thank the Lord that Josh was not injured worse than he was!!!  

The next day I spent working on the dinosaur quilt while Josh slept and Susan ran errands to get things settled with their jobs and their dogs.  The stitching went quickly and I was excited that I would get the little quilt done so quickly.  Then it came time to remove the paper.  UH-OH! Even though the big chunks tore off, there were still little paper bits stuck under the stitches.  Worse yet, some of my quilting stitches got ripped out while removing the paper. 

It was a total disaster. I was so upset.  By the time I got all the paper off I had messed up all the quilting.  I ended up spending the next two days removing every bit of stitching from the top.  Then I had to figure out some way to quilt it.  I drew all the designs again, this time on very lightweight tear away stabilizer.  After quilting it, I carefully removed the paper.  It came off better this time, but there were still little paper bits.  It took me two days with tweezers and reading glasses to get the paper off.  This is the finished quilt.  The owner was very happy with it.

This week has been eventful, also.  My husband returned from Michigan with some kind of flu like symptoms.  He has been feeling bad off and on all week.   The flu and a stomach virus are going around the school where I work.  Lucky me, I caught the stomach virus.  Three days of things that are not polite to discuss, and I still feel kind of lousy.

Even though all that has been going on I finished a couple of Christmas gifts.  The ornament table runner is 42" long.  It was made from strips, layered with batting and backing before quilting.  Then  the excess fabric was cut away and a backing fabric was attached by sewing right sides together. Then I turned it right side out, pressed it, and top stitched it with monofilament.  

  I also finished the first of two Snowman quilts made from Moda's fabric line Be Jolly.  It went together fairly quickly with rail fence blocks, printed panel blocks, and a couple of outer borders.  To quilt it I just outlined the snowmen, added snowflakes and loops behind them, and did a snowflake meander in the rail fence blocks.  You can't see the quilting very well in these pictures, unfortunately. 

I still have one Snowman quilt, a Christmas star block exchange quilt, and a customer Santa quilt to finish in the next week.   I had better go get busy!