Kathy you are Wonder Woman, thats two AOTH´s you have completed, the other was a whisker away from being done, I take my hat of to you.

Elle, the first AOTH was all machine - I could do several blocks in a very short time. The thing that took the longest was changing the thread all the time! I still have the embroidery to do on about 12 or so blocks, plus finishing up those short sashings - 5 left of them. They go fast. Taking the embroidery with me in the car/hotel.

Good Luck with that Kathy, looking forward very much to seeing yours finished.

Oh Kathy. It sounds like a dream trip. I would love to go back to Alburquerque. When we were there in 1999 I didn't have time to hit the quilt shops. They had a bad storm while we were there and we spent one afternoon holed up in our hotel room. Good luck with your shopping and send us lots of pics. :thumbup: :thumbup:

Does sound good, doesn't it?

Have a safe trip Kathy! I just love Alb. one of my fav places to eat out! If I could remember the name of the rest. DH is asleep right now..he would probably know. Its great Mexican though! I just love to see all the balloons there. We've been twice...both times really late summer, early fall when they were practicing for the launch. I wanna go up in a balloon...DH thinks I'm nuts, but I think it would be great fun!

Buy lots and look hard at that Avante!

We're here now. I haven't gotten off this Board long enough to do much more than run over to Wendy's for taco salads. We are a very active group tonight!

Well its morning here now, and I am back in the swing of quilting AOTH. Sweetie is performing well (sounds as if she will have a rival in your Avante), going a treat, and I've just finished quilting round the centre 16 blocks. I need to do a little bit in some of the blocks, just to hold them together before I move on to going round the next lot of blocks.

Right now, I can't quite decide on quilting those blocks that don't have any black background with them. See through thread, or matching thread? Decisions, decisions. Any opinions here???

Well I am glad you are back to quilting with Sweetie again, but as for designs I have no idea, I have a problem when it comes to that part myself.

Hmmm......depends on what design you are using for the quilting Lesley. My typical solution is mono for all my SITD quilting, then matching or contrasting thread for ALL other areas depending on whether I want the thread to do any "talking" or not.

So happy Sweetie is purrrrring along for you now! Hug her from us and do we get to see any progress pics???