I’ve been absent from blogging for over 3 weeks. Two days after I wrote my last blog post, I ended up sick with whatever that nasty virus is that’s going around. And it is indeed a horrible nasty one!! Three days stuck in bed with a fever, and then almost two weeks stuck on the couch with no energy to do anything other than change the channel on the TV and cough.
Once I recovered enough from that so I could put more than one thought together at a time, there was blogging to catch up with on the guild’s blog. That took a while because I missed both the meeting and the workshop, so other people had to send me the photos and the information. In the middle of that, our grandson Avery came for a visit for the weekend. He finally got to meet his cousin Abrielle. I don’t think he was terribly impressed. I had enough energy to watch what he was doing from the couch. Avery and his daddy and Grampy had a great time, though. Me, not so much.... sigh....
However, I’ve been back to normal for about a week now, and trying to catch up on all the work I missed while I was sick. I finished off a quilt of my own that was on the machine. However, I don’t yet have a picture. It’s been too cold and too windy to get outside for a good one. I did get the binding cut for it today, so it might have binding on it by the time I’m able to get a picture of it. I have two others that have been finished in the last couple of months also waiting on pictures. The first nice day we get, I’ll do them all at once.
In the meantime I’ve been working on a quilt for Gail. It’s a bunch of really cute chickens. I’m pretty sure they are Lori Holt patterns. It’s getting a custom quilting job done on it. Feathers in the chicken, a kinda paisley type design in the wing, wood grain for the sides of the nesting boxes, and pebbles for the background.
It should be done tomorrow. By the way, anyone reading this who is waiting for me to do one of your quilts, I’m running about three weeks behind what I would have told you when you dropped them off. So, that’s it for the update and I hope to get back to a semi-normal posting routine again real soon.
We kept one and swapped one, ending up with 8 different blocks each month. We decided to take the summer months off, so we ended up with 80 blocks. Mine is now quilting and bound and counts as this year’s third finish. 
Here’s a closer view of the quilting. I used a new pantograph called Persian Paisley. And as usual, I used a faux piped binding with a diagonally striped fabric 
for a great machine sewn finish. I found a large scale roses print in my fabric stash which worked great for the backing. I had a few blocks left over, which got pieced into the backing, along with a border stipe that I thought fit with the theme and feel of the quilt. I even wrote a label on one of the leftover four patch blocks. 
Considering I hardly ever remember to do labels, that’s an accomplishment. Because of this quilt being done with a friend, I’ve named it “Friendship’s Garden”. Thanks Jannette, for a great year of swapping. I can’t believe how fast the year went.
