Hedgehog and other visitors

I have been busy cleaning the house (including the packing by new machine in its case away from the dining table, just to make room for food!) and baking and cooking and no time to blog world for a couple of days. We had a family lunch yesterday with DH's father, sister and brother and his son and our three kids, 13 people in all. It was a warm day and we could eat outdoors under a pavilion roof and on the veranda. It was nice to see everyone, and we had an extra visitor as well. A tiny little hedgehog baby was wandering around on the lawn, and our two-year-old guest was thrilled to see something like that.

To show my slow progress on the summer stash challenge quilt, a picture of basting the layers for quilting. I was also testing our new garden table and chairs; we have been planning to buy a set for at least five years and finally did it last week to seat all our guests for the Sunday lunch! I don't trust my safety pins alone when I plan to quilt by machine, I need the basting to be sure. I know it sounds like belt and suspenders, but that's me.

This little piece I quilted with safety pins only, but it is only three rows high. They are the rows I ripped off the challenge quilt which was too long for my backing piece of fabric. I tried almost all the different quilting stitches of my new machine here. On the dark brown piece you can see the jump stitches caused by a too small needle. After I changed to a number 100 it worked all right. I decided to stitch in the ditch for the challenge quilt after all; it will look more masculine . I will use the fancy stitches for smaller, sweeter quilts to come.