Jamming Does Not Mean Good

When I talk of jamming, I am not talking about music.  I have, on occasion, gotten the hopping foot caught under the edge of a quilt and since the needle is still in full swing, it has sewn the fabric into the center of the hopping foot.

Big giant bummer!  And then whilst trying to get the thing unstuck (rippit, rippit), I broke the seam ripper (holy smokes – never done that before!).  And, BTW, it took forever to find where that tiny pointy piece flew, so it wouldn't get sewn into the quilt!

But, fortunately I have two of those (this style is my favorite, so I have one in my travel bag) and it eventually comes unstuck.  So I finished up the Quilt of Valor that I was working on and got it over to the meeting – too bad Flat Stanley didn’t get a photo with it.

Pieced by CT Quilters QOV Group, Quilted by Me

After that, I finished up another of Beth’s novelty squares quilts – this time with a different panto of critters that I like.  This one had smaller turtles, snails and frogs:

Frog, bottom left - Turtle, top right

Snail

Isn’t that heart in the middle a nice touch?

On the nature front, I have been trying to take a photo of our Gallinule family for quite some time.  The saga began with one Gallinule in our pond – unusual for us.  This is a stock photo:

This guy was all by himself for at least a week until another came along.  And then the other was gone … or so I thought.  The second one was the female and she had retired to the grassy area in the pond to build her nest.  The tiny babies were the cutest things – just little black puffballs.  The red shields on their faces comes later.

But the dad wouldn’t let anyone come within 300 feet of them without squawking and when he does, they all melt away into the grasses quicker than a whistle.

Mom and the babies are in the grassline in the back

They look like an elegantly dressed duck – black, a little white and red - but they aren’t really ducks at all.  They are in the Rail family and they have long legs and clutching feet that can walk on top of the weed covering and hold onto the grasses.  They swim and dive very well even though they don’t have webbed feet like ducks.  The babies have gotten quite big now and they are venturing farther afield from mom, so maybe I’ll have a better chance of a photo soon.