After One Day of Winter, Spring Returns

The light was right today and the Northern Shoveler was there again and I was able to get several really good closeups even though he was about halfway across the lake.  They are a very striking duck with their iridescent heads and stark white chests and those really funny cupped bills.

Today he was hanging out with all the Coots as you can see.

Back again today, we all know who he is.

I don't have a good surface to show the whole quilt top but this is a Baltimore Album quilt I started  25 years ago -- I used to applique the blocks on my frequent plane trips from Rochester to Wash DC on business  - it's bad when the stewardesses start recognizing you!  It languished for years as blocks which finally got sewn together last year and then were waiting for a border of some kind.  Well today was the day.  I got the darn thing drafted finally yesterday, cut all the strips I needed on the bias and sewed them onto the border fabric.  

This is the unturned  bias strip onto which I will applique approximately 500 leaves!!  I really wanted to work on this as I needed a good hand project for tv viewing in the evenings with my dear husband. I have never liked to sit without doing something with my hands.   I may add a few flowers into the border as well and haven't finished the corners yet.  And I have sewn the binding on the nine quilts I machine quilted while I was down here.  There was one heck of a lot of work in this top so I want to get it finished.  I will hand quilt it as well -- it is the old cotton sateen that quilts like butter so that will be fun and hopefully will get done before our next GVQC quilt show in a year and a half.  I plan on putting a family genealogy on the reverse side -- I can track back parts of the family for hundreds of  years so it will be a bit of a challenge to draft as well!!