What was lost is now found!

We had a great UFO session in the morning! More details on that later this week.

After the group left, I made my lunch and went out to sit in the gazebo. I know - that was the kiss of death for me.

I abandoned all plans to do some work inside. It was so nice - I was outside in a T-shirt and I was warm. I couldn't let that opportunity pass me by. I was going to work on my laptop but I didn't.

Instead, I plugged in my audiobook and grabbed my chair. But not before I grabbed this as well.

So this is a quilt top that I made in my early twenties. All the roses are done with liquid embroidery. The cotton on the painted squares isn't that great of quality and there is a lot of deterioration on the hand embroidered squares.  I believe the blue fabric is polyester.

I took out all the quilting when we were on our road trip to Nashville. But the top has sat around since then. So I got out my trusty seam ripper and I was off to the gazebo.

Quilt top being disassembled

Why am I taking it apart? It's a queen sized quilt and I used to have it on my bed. I know I had a picture around here somewhere and my dog at the time used to sit on it so he could look out the window. Check out this blog post where I talk about ripping the quilt apart and check the date!!!  There's also a picture of the dog sitting on the quilt.

I'm going to salvage the good squares. They will be reinforced with a thin stabilizer on the back and the quilt will be put back together again. This time with cotton and hopefully I can get a lap quilt out of it. I think those squares are worth saving. They are a style of quilting that we did back then and well - I want it!!

But the moment I put it on the floor of the gazebo to take a picture, guess what happened? I had helpers. Instantly! Now how do they know that?

Thanks, Mom!!!

Yep - dirty feet and all!

And when I tried to get her off without dragging her off and damaging the quilt more - this is the sass that I got.

Ah no - I'm not getting off and not sharing!

Silly girl!! I did manage to get her off and shoo both of them out of the gazebo, but let's just say that they are Mom's girls.

I managed to get all the rows taken apart. There is more ripping to do, but that's all I got done and I'm pretty happy with my progress. Hopefully, the next part won't take that long. Then the squares will be soaked to clean them up - well those that I rescue. Then to find some new fabric and sew it back together again.

Needless to say, it won't be assembled the same way that I originally sewed it together. Actually, now that I think of it - this quilt did see a repair job a while back. I'm not sure when that happened or why. The dog probably ate a hole in it or something.

I must have used the shortest stitch length on the machine (or so it seemed) and all the seams were pressed open. ACK!!! It wasn't fun to rip that apart.

Seams pressed open

While I was in the gazebo, I checked my e-mail and oh shoot, someone sent me a reminder of something they wanted to look at. Instead of waiting, I popped downstairs to get the tool immediately as I knew that I would forget.

I wasn't a 100% sure where it was, but I looked in the logical spot and there it was. But before I found the tool, I was looking deep into this corner.

The pegboard with tools

OH MY GOD --- look what I found!!!!  There are my TWO STUFFING FORKS. I was pretty darn sure that I had bought those - I remember the diamonds on the packaging and the handles. But I had no idea where they were. Now I know!! I still have a couple of geckos to stuff and I want to try them out!

Stuffing forks

Yahoo!!!!  So while I didn't get any work done that I was supposed to be doing, I did get something accomplished. And yes - I finished the audiobook, but it was in the wee hours of the night when I couldn't sleep.

I'm blogging this week on QUILTsocial. It's all about machine quilting this week. Loads of great tips.

It's Monday sewing and I'm excited although I can't stay long today as I have a couple of commitments. And I'm hoping to order the new floor for the basement today. Yeah!!!!

On that note, I'm out of here!!!

Have a super day!!

Ciao!