Basted...Quilting

This is a very rare pajama quilting day for me.  Doesn't happen very often, and I must do other things too, but I'm pretty sure I won't have to venture away from home before Sunday morning.

Baby quilt is basted.  I used Sharon Schamber's method of hand basting. She has posted an instuctional video about it on youtube. I do it just a little differently, but with the same results.
Finally got the stabilizing quilting done this afternoon. 

So far I've quilted the four green multi-triangle areas along the body of the quilt.  I'm using Fil-Tec Glide thread in green, gold, and violet and my lovely 1935 Singer 15-88 treadle.  Those treadle irons operate so easily (it's a straight leg).  Over spring break or sometime this summer I need to make time to work on the irons of the 1919 Singer 66.  It has issues with thread tension and with treadle irons that just don't operate as easily and smoothly as they should.  On the newer machine, most of the time I don't even need to use my hand to make sure the wheel turns the correct direction, but on the 66 I have to use my hand almost every time to make sure it goes in the right direction.  Since it was much dirtier, I'm hoping the problem is no more serious than some dust or dirt that I haven't managed to clean up.

Four hard days of work this week.  On Tuesday it was 53 degrees F. when I left to come home.  About 20 miles later I hit a snowstorm for which the NM Highway Dept. had been unprepared.  I couldn't tell that snowplows had even been out, so the trip was an extra 40 or 45 minutes long.

I have a good friend who is spending the month in Hawaii--although she had a delay of several days getting her flight due to last week's snowstorms affecting air traffic in the East.  But now she's there, having fun, and staying warm.  How nice is that?  Now that winter is here, I'm grateful for every hot flash/power surge! I'm also hoping that the snow predicted for Sunday night is not enough to affect the Monday commute.

Oh,...the quilt top in the background in the first picture is a counting quilt inspired by my niece Karen, who celebrated her 31st birthday last week.  I started it when she was probably 3 years old.  One of the first nursery rhymes I learned was "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater."  Even at the age of two I was fascinated by the idea that any husband would want to keep his wife locked up--and then I was privileged to live through the years of great advances in rights for women.  I put the center section on the wall hoping I'd get motivated to finish it, but I'm not sure I ever will, given the quality of those early 1980's fabrics.  I'm thinking I may re-do it in batiks.  We'll see......

Stay warm, dry, and safe.....