NASA Selfies and star forming regions

Tonight I am going to brag about my husband.  You may or may not know that he is an astronomer.  His particular research interest is star forming regions, and an image of such a region that was taken for his research has been selected as one of the top 30 images taken in the first 15 years of the Spitzer Space Telescope.

To mark 15 years since Spitzer's launch, NASA has loaded the top 30 images taken by the telescope into the NASA Selfies app.  You can download the app on your phone to take an astronaut selfie like Rosie's:

You can choose from 30 images for the background.  Rosie, being a loyal pooch, of course chose my husband's image!

I took a selfie as well, though I think Rosie's is more fun.

I'd also like to note that as knowledgeable as the hubby is about this region, I'm an expert on a much closer star forming region: my sewing room. Look at some what formed in that region:

Star Quilts by Joanne Kerton/Canuck Quilter Designs

Top row: Jelly Bean Stars, Sparkling Strings, Star Steps, Starlight Wishes, Sparkling Trail

Middle row: Forty-Eight, Lucky Bugger, Fundy Skies, Eclipse Sky, Sparkling Trail

Bottom row: Sparkling Thirties, Starfall (batiks), Starfall (Tula Pink), Vintage Sparkle, Fundy Skies.

I hope you'll come back tomorrow for the latest star pattern release! Magnitudes is ready to makes its debut!

Hand Quilting Supervisor

Here's what a hand quilting session looks like at my house.

Sometimes Rosie takes a closer look.

Spreading out the quilt to assess progress also involves paws-on and full-body testing.

Despite all that assistance, I still have not finished quilting Laura's Chic Country. I had resolved in January to sit and quilt every night and planned to have this finished by summer. Chuckle.  I know better than to make that sort of prediction! The best-laid plans were interrupted, but I have continued to make slow progress, even if not every night.

Quilting progress January 2018

Quilting progress August 2018

I recently passed the halfway mark.  I am tempted to name a new target date, but that might be tempting fate.  I'll just keep plugging away when the mood is right and it will be done when it is done.

Making progress?

When I came home from vacation I had grand plans to get a few quilty things finished.  First up was the Cyclone baby quilt. Here's where I left it in early July. There were 5 more blocks plus the border still needing quilting just like the block below.

My grand plans came to a screeching halt when I bounded into my sewing room the weekend I returned to find my machine wasn't in its usual spot.  Don't panic!  I just forgot I had brought it in to the shop to get its annual cleaning while I was away.  Sigh.  I cleaned my space instead. That is still progress, right?

By the time the machine came home I was in the middle of painting a bedroom, covered in paint and achy because apparently painting uses muscles that I don't often use.  My two day painting job took four, but on day 5, I treated myself to uninterrupted sewing. May I say that despite the wait, getting the machine cleaned and serviced was definitely worthwhile?  It purrs like a kitten.  I hadn't noticed how hard it was working until it was clean and humming happily again.

OK, back to the quilting progress.

Sigh.  Quilting the edge of the backing to the back of the quilt is not progress.  Please tell me I'm not the only one who has done this (ahem, more than once).

I took care of that little setback and finished quilting all the sashing, in the ditch around all the stars, and concentric circles in the background of 4 of the 6 blocks.

Before I got around to quilting the background of the remaining two blocks, I started thinking about borders.  Something simple.  Borders...

There we go: progress derailed again!  Thinking about quilting the borders led me to thinking about adding extra borders to make this quilt larger.  My son is an ISU student and he could use an ISU Cyclones quilt, right?  He's 19, years old, with the height that goes with the age, so this baby size just won't cut it.  Don't ask me why this didn't occur to me before I started the quilting!

That's where the quilt stands currently.  Maybe today I will do the math to figure out if I have the fabric I need to add to the top and the back as I have planned.