I Do Wish I Had Brought My Dyes and Some White Fabric With Me...

I am actually doing some quilting down here finally -- both machine and hand quilting.  This pictures shows the first block I have outline quilted.  There are 25 blocks and I will hand quilt around each of the appliqued pieces and then I will fill in the white background with cross hatch.  I started this quilt probably 30 years ago and all the blocks were done probably in those first five years.  They sat in a box but over the past couple of years I have sewn the blocks together, then appliqued a border (last winter's hand project), and finally pin basted it and am now hopefully going to finish all the quilting this winter.

 This is the first of the quilts I am machine quilting.  Right now I am just straight stitching in the ditch up and down and then cross wise which will effectively outline all the triangles in the quilt.  I will probably  add some additional quilting in the centers of the hexagons but we shall see.  This is a king sized quilt which is destined for the master here which has soft blue walls.  This is one of the few quilts I made for a specific bed!

However, it occurred to me the other night that I have the ideal setup here for doing ice dyeing!!!  Why I didn't think of this before is sad.  I have this wonderful refrigerator here that not only dispenses ice cubes forever but also crushes ice for you as well.  So I could just fill a bucket from my fridge!!  However, I didn't bring any dye or white fabric.  However, if I do find some at Joanns, there may be the first dyeing in NC done while I am down here.  I don't want to make any big investments in fabric or dyes but who knows.....

 The weather has been a little iffey the past couple of days (thus the machine quilting finally) but I did get to the secret beach.  Warren insisted (I ran into him on the beach) that there were no "critters" but that is only because he didn't look too hard!!  My everpresent Ruddy Turnstones were busy as usual as well as the other common visitors (Sanderlings, Willets and Laughing Gulls).

 This is the beach at low tide.  In the distance you can see the sandbags which have been employed to keep the units at the end of the beach from washing away in the next storm!  This strange rock formation is called coquina rock (and I assume is made up of the tiny coquina shells that you see at the surfline at the beach -- they are small and come in all sorts of pastel colors.)

Yesterday, I spotted this double rainbow between the storms.  The darker rainbow was a full arc in front of the house.

 Another butterfly identified -- the Spicebush Swallowtail at my neighbors.  Taken from quite a distance.  It took me several shots to identify the Swallowtail.

This is the pile of remaining quilts ready to be machine quilted this winter.  Hopefully one or two will be good enough for the quilt show next June.  After this batch, I think all the beds will be covered down here!