You can call me Finishy McFinisher!

After finishing my Project Park for HMQG, I was kind of on a roll--finishing-wise.

With the walking foot on the machine, I quilted two small quilts, then got the binding on them. And now they are done! It really feels good to have 2 UFOs off my to-do list!
This one will just be added to the growing collection of small quilts at our house. It is made with leftovers from my brother and sister-in-law's quilt. Since I rarely follow patterns I often cut more than I need when I make a quilt and can get 2--and sometimes more--quilts from one cutting session. A sort of 'cut one-get one'.

I just finished this one 



with leftover HSTs from this one.



The second quilt is for our neighbor's new baby, due to come home this week. Yay! This is another little quilt made from leftovers. In this case, the original was made for my cousin's first son. He will be 12 this October, so these parts have been laying around for quite a while.



Here is a snapshot of the earlier quilt with dachshunds marching around the border.



Next on my quilting program is Bry's row for HMQG. (How is it that the 3rd Saturday seems to be coming so early in the month?! We meet next week, so I have to get this done!) Now, I did cheat a bit and 'robin ahead' with her row--I already have 2 squares done. Her colors are so rich and beautiful that this one is a real pleasure to work on. Pippa has made some suggestions with coordinating snakes!



And an interesting, non-quilty side note. I've been trying to get back in the habit of exercising, so yesterday between laundry and cleaning and binding, I got in a walk on our neighborhood green belt. There is a bar bell-shaped oval, about 2+ miles long with a 'water feature' in the middle (I call it a drainage ditch, others call it a bayou.) In wetter times, it flows, but we are in the midst of a drought and it now is more standing than flowing. But it usually has quite a bit of life around it: turtles, herons, egrets, I even saw a roseate spoonbill there once. Yesterday I saw a small alligator! It was about 2 feet long, but would have been longer if it had all of its tail--it looked like a sawed-off alligator. In spite of being small, its mouth was probably the size of my hand! CHOMP!