Marilyn's Garden close to done

I have a new quilt I have been working on in secret..."Marilyn's Garden".

An overview from my cold and windy porch tonight.

Marilyn is Marilyn Mook, one of my professors and friends from Michigan State University who passed away a couple of years ago. She used to donate a quilt to the Michigan Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics' (formerly Michigan Dietetic Association's) state conference every year to help our Association make money for dietetic student scholarships. I made this quilt and am donating it to the Association to honor her memory (and hopefully make money for the same cause).

Marilyn had a nice perennial garden that ringed the edge of her fenced yard, thus the name of the quilt. This quilt will be given to one lucky ticket buyer this Friday. I had better get working on the binding!

The binding will be the same batik as on the front of the quilt...doesn't it look great with the back?

Baby Quilt Pronto! And an "addition"!

Our new "addition", Mr. Shorty.

We named this kitty Shorty because he has a short tail and always hung around our house. (His family named him Fred, but he'll always be Shorty to us.) He was a super friendly neighborhood cat, but for the longest time we didn't know where he lived. One summer while we were walking the neighborhood, we figured out who his owners were. 

Both last winter and this winter have been horribly cold, and the owners would let him go outside. He would come to our house, a few houses away, to get warm. One time we brought him home, and the owners said he hadn't been staying home much and they were thinking of bringing him to the shelter. (What???  You guys are letting him out in zero temps!)  DH decided right then and there we would adopt him, and they were OK with it. He is a very nice cat, and gets along fine with the other cats (but Miss Rose gets bent out of shape about it once in awhile). He's about 13 or 14 years old.

Baby quilt packets getting prepared for the stitchers at work.

Next is our baby quilt project.  We have a pregnant co-worker who did not want to know the baby's sex, so that left us quilty ladies in a quandary. What color to make the baby quilt?  Fortunately Deb and I saw a kit and cute pattern from Renee Nanneman that was just perfect for either a boy or a girl. And on sale, too! 

Baby quilt top put together in a weekend. We were given 1 week's notice of the shower.

Mom got to see the quilt top last week (not done) at her surprise shower and "loved" the colors.  My task this week is to finish the quilting, bind it and attach a label. Baby is due March 4, but mom looks like she's going to pop her buttons! Literally!

A little quilting done. Still have the square-in-square blocks to quilt.