Patiently Quilting and Lenni Update!

Oh, where to begin? The past few weeks have been a blur around the Squash House! Let's go to the major activity first - Mr. Squash had back surgery last week. He's had back pain ranging from mild to "get me outa here" for a couple of years now. Recently a new MRI detected a large, bulging disc and some other minor issues that needed to be addressed. A wonderful, young neurosurgeon worked his magic, and now Mr. Squash is in recovery mode - doing quite well! Nowadays recovery is up and about, not down and out! He has to walk every day and by the end of 4 weeks, he needs to be up to a mile. There are restrictions, though, that limit him to doing much of anything else, but he's happy playing with his new iPad, reading and watching movies!

Being that we can't venture far from home for a while has given me the opportunity to get back to some quilting! That's where the "patiently" (Mr. Squash) quilting in my post title came from! A while back, Stephanie had a tutorial on New York Beauties. She has known for some time that I've had the fabric and pattern for one, but have had a mental block on the paper piecing part! Thanks to her fantastic tutorial, and some diligence on my part, I finally "got it"!!

Here is some of what I've finished so far. The purple you see is really more of a deep red/burgundy - not sure why the photo translated to purple! I have four more of these to go, then I'll be adding to either side of each piece, then two borders are added, then it gets quilted. It's a pattern by Mabeth Oxenreider from Love of Quilting back in 2004! Yes, I'd been struggling to understand how to do this for some time!

Speaking of quilting, I had a lovely conversation with Heidi Kaisand today about my APQS Lenni. Heidi is National Sales Manager for APQS and is finalizing my Lenni purchase. She informed me that just last night APQS announed they would be offering the horizontal and Bliss drive for the Lenni. It will be debuted at the Houston International Quilt Show next month. Well, it didn't take much thought for me to go ahead and order the horizontal drive - I've heard there is a world of difference between it and the vertical drive Lenni comes with! The only problem is that I'll have to wait a bit longer for Lenni to find her way to the Squash House! The slight delay just gives me more time to piece quilt tops!

Shortly after our company left a couple of weeks ago, I had another "Supreme" sewing job for Stephanie. This afternoon's mail brought a lovely thank you from her in the way of some yummy Essex cotton/linen and a gyoza maker! A while back Mr. Squash and I searched all over and couldn't find one anywhere! I mentioned it to Stephanie one day, and what do you know! How thoughtful, wouldn't you say? I won't be able to show you what I made for a while, but stayed tuned, it's really adorable!
There has also been a lot of yard work to do....you know, end of summer, beginning of Autumn stuff. Earlier in the summer we saw a gorgeous tree at one of the local nurseries and decided if it was still available in the Fall, which is prime planting time, we would get one. Sure enough, there were two left and one now resides here at the Squash House! It is a Hakuro Nishiki Willow. In the spring the leaves are a variegated pink, green and white - so pretty. Right now the leaves are just green and white and as they turn and begin to drop, they become yellow/green. There is still work to do, but I'm having trouble tearing myself away from my sewing machine and Mr. Squash this week!