Weeellll - first the OT - after months of wondering why Maui-the-Him-Cat has been losing weight and not eating - we committed to an exploratory surgery last week and while nothing dire was found, we got biopsy results today. I have yet another (4th in a row!) middle-aged cat with cancer. AAAAUUUURRGH!!!!!
The reason I'm not off snurffling all over my stash is that, in this case, it's not an immediate end to my bedraggeled meezer. He has a low-grade form of lymphoma (which apparently comes in more varieties than I have batik colours in my charm stash), and with treatment, there's a very good chance he'll recover quite a bit from his current malnutrition and tick along for years. Apparently the form of this looks alot like IBD, or is associated with IBD, or something, and often what takes out the cats is starvation, not tumours or metastasis. Once we finish his Baytril and healing week (from the incision) he starts on daily Prednisone combined with Leukeran (sp?) every 3rd day. He got a feeding tube at the surgery, but our vet has said to not top him up completely with it, thinking that once the pred kicks in he'll have an appetite back.
On to happier things - I got a binding onto a long-neglected UFO! I'm going to press it out tonight and start stitiching it down.
This UFO is actually a quilt from only my 2nd quilt class, about 3 years ago now, and it was very quickly pieced, then semi-quilted after a few months, and has been sitting "almost done" for over two years as I haven't figured out what "more" to do for quilting it. It is the biggest quilt I've made to date, the 60"x75" "lap" size of Atkinson's Lucky Stars pattern. I've actually started and finished numerous smaller quilts and practice pieces since starting this one, including a "crib" size of the same pattern (which covers a twin bed for my niece - Atkinson sizes are generous), but this one was stalled.
I had begun quilting it by echo-quilting the star motifs, using my walking foot at the time. I then filled in more by making big, overlapping squares in between the start motifs, which made a slightly smaller pattern of chains of diamonds where the squares crossed. I then decided if I was going to do more, I wanted more free-motion practice before I decided to commit such a big project to my attempts at free-motion. While I've gotten more practice - I never figured out what more to add in.
I finally went closet-diving this weekend, pulled it out, and hung it over the loft rail to stare at for a while. And I decided, oh heck, it was quilted enough to hold together, and about as flat as I'd get it anyway as the quilting I had done DID anchor it all over - so I cut, assembled, and applied the binding and trimmed the excess backing/batting. It looks great, and I'm thinking since it's likely to be my cuddle-on-the-sofa quilt, that maybe I'll slowly practice some hand-quilting in between my sock-knitting sofa projects and fill in the centers of the stars with different things.
Or maybe I'll brave the free-motion demons again.
But I have a usable quilt! Yay! the first one that's finally for ME!
(Now planning a quilt for our king bed, with Atkinson's "Tile Tango"!)