Heating Up

Good morning, my friends. It's looking like we're in for several days of hot weather. And if that wasn't bad enough, we're also under an air quality alert. Sounds like a good day to hide out in my refrigerated basement sewing room. We've been running the air conditioner, and that always sends the basement into freezer territory. When I'm in the basement, I'm wearing a hoodie, despite the hot temps outside.

The kitties were outside for a while. Smitty had to come inside to cool his tummy furs on the wood floor.

Sadie took the high road. She cooled her tummy furs on the top of the china cabinet.

She always looks suspicious when I point the camera in her direction. She worries she'll get loaded into the RV or something.

The morning started with me taking the first stitches on the next Raggedy blocks. I'm starting with this one. There's another one to stitch when this one is finished.

After that, I made the salads we'd have for last night's dinner. It was good planning to make a cold dinner, and there are leftovers. This first one is a family favorite. It appears on the menu at least once per year. This is Seafood Pasta with Lemon-Saffron Herb Dressing. The recipe originally appeared in the July, 2005, issue of Bon Appetit. 

Just FYI, my grocery store doesn't stock campanelle pasta. I'm using trottole here. I've also used cavatappi. You want a thick spiral pasta that will hold onto that dressing. Also, I happen to have a supply of saffron given to me by a friend who visited Morocco some years back. You can leave it out, and you won't miss it. Also, I'm using canned crab. The fresh stuff is almost prohibitively expensive. I refuse to buy it out of protest.

Okay, and I wanted something as a side dish, and so I made this cooling summer salad. This is Watermelon Salad with Rum and Mint. It's so tasty when you want to keep things cool.

The recipe originally appeared in Everyday Food magazine. (Pretty sure that was a Martha Stewart publication.) It's no longer available online, but you can find it here. Also, if you're avoiding alcohol, white grape juice or apple juice can be substituted for the rum.

Okay, so that took a lot longer than I thought it would. I didn't make it to my quilting until after lunch time. Three more blocks were finished off. This one:

And this one:

And finally, this one. Looking at the one below, I can see I forgot to bury my threads at the bottom. I'll fix that today.

I tried a different angle to show you the back. Here's how that looks. So far, so good. I was getting a hint of eyelashes on the top. I kept messing with the tension with no success. Finally, I gave the tension knob a good three-fourths turn, and that took care of it. Sometimes you just need to bring out the big guns.

Okay, and so I still had about an hour left in my sewing day. I laid out all the blocks and "spacers" for the Cats in Pajamas. This was my 2024 Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt.

And then I started sewing them together. The left two vertical rows of blocks are sewn into rows, but not sewn together yet. 

Today I'll aim to finish the right two rows and then sew the rows together. There's also a narrow border around the outside. I'm a little worried I'm going to run out of that background fabric, but I'm also pretty sure I checked the required yardage before I started. We'll see.

Also, I'll quilt another row on the Stitching Wisdom quilt. The corner blocks (where I'll be today) are pieced blocks, and so I'll do a little dot-to-dot quilting there. There's one housekeeping chore on today's agenda, and I'm going to mix up some meat marinade this morning. Aside from that, it'll be a mostly sewing day. We're looking at another warm day. That basement sewing room will keep things frosty.

A Finish and a Start

Good morning, my friends. Finally...writing at a leisurely pace. I can write slow through the weekend, but then it'll start back up again next week. We're taking the truck in Monday to have the air conditioner fixed. It's a little late for the hot weather, but oh well. On Tuesday, I'm getting my hair cut and colored. It's badly needed. But, hey...we have groceries to get us through the first part of next week, and that's always a good thing.

Before we left home yesterday morning, I was just a few stitches away from finishing the first block for "Home is Where my Flock Is." When we got home, I finished it off.

Since the floss for my "Sashiko" piece still has not arrived, I'll get to work on the next two embroidered sections for the Raggedy & Friends quilt. These are the two I'll stitch next. This is the picture from the pattern.

Sadie was there to help me with the switcheroo on my project boxes, but she wasn't at all sure it was safe. Was that bad man from the day before still here? And since the doors to her clubhouse were closed, she felt as if she needed to turn her lasers on low beam.

Thankfully, Smitty was there to reassure her that the coast was clear.

But we didn't spend much time in the sewing room yesterday. We had quilting to do in my office upstairs. It was time to turn my attention to the Stitching Wisdom quilt. It's been awaiting its turn under my needle for quite some time.

I spent some time sorting through my thread boxes looking for something I liked for the top and bobbin threads. After settling on something, I took the cover off the machine and discovered it was already loaded with a perfectly acceptable thread, and a nearly-full bobbin. So, I'll stick with that. It's a 50-weight Essential thread. I have the same thread in the bobbin.

From there, I spent quite a bit of time perusing my Pinterest files trying to decide how to quilt it. It's hard to decide on these embroidered quilts. I don't want to get too carried away because I don't want the quilting to compete for attention with the hand embroidery. Everything I looked at left me feeling pretty meh, and so I went to the Bird Brain Designs website to see how they'd done it. They used a kind of half feather design around the outer edges of the embroidered blocks, and that was what I had in mind too.

Okay, so I was ready to start. Next, I flipped the excess backing fabric over to the top to check my tension. That looks pretty good.

The back looks good too.

For functionality, I did a little meander in the block center, and then outlined the design with the half feather.

Here's how that looks from the back.

My plan is to quilt a row of blocks each day, and then work on the sashings and borders. If I do that, I can have the quilting finished in about a week. So I continued on with the next two blocks in that row. I'm letting the embroidery tell me what kind of a meander I should do in the middle.

For this next one, I went around the heart.

And that was enough for the day. It's a little hard to see the stitching on the back. I've messed with the contrast and brightness in this next image. I'm hoping you can see it.

And then I left it needle down on the next row of blocks. That's where I'll pick it up today.

Also today I'm making dinner in the morning. It's going to be hot today, and so a pasta salad and a watermelon salad will be a nice cool dinner. (I like it when dinner time arrives, and dinner is already made.) When that's finished, I'll get back to my quilting. Hopefully, I'll have time today to start sewing together the Cats in Pajamas. All the pieces are cut. It's just a matter of sewing it all together.

Just as I was getting ready to publish this post, we spotted a barred owl in our field. He was in the grass, going after one the mice Smitty and Sadie haven't caught yet. The mouse must have gotten away because he's sitting on the bird feeder right now...lying in wait.

Okay...since the day is supposed to be a hot one, I'll commence trying to stay cool right now. What are you doing to stay cool?

Stitching and Tracing

Good morning, my friends. For the third morning in a row, I'm writing fast. Mike needs some routine lab work done this morning. I'm tagging along. We'll get breakfast afterward, and then we'll do our grocery shopping. It's sort of a date, but not. But, hey! We have clean windows! The better to see you with!

Yesterday's sewing was mainly my attempt to stay out of Scott's way. There was time for slow-stitching before he arrived. That gave me time to start on the first block for the "Home is Where my Flock Is" quilt. These blocks will be done in shades of gray and black.

After I showered and dressed, I went outside to fill the bird feeders. There, I found Smitty sitting on his pedestal, posing for a picture he hopes will be used when his likeness is added to Mt. Rushmore. Why should the guy living in the Whitehouse get all the glory? Besides, Smitty would surely make a better president, wouldn't you agree? (Agreement optional.)

In the sewing room, I first needed to add borders to the last block for The Sewing Room BOM. 

After adding the borders, I gave some thought to how I can finish this off...and why I should want to. (Life is short, you know.)

Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt.

Okay, so if you've been paying attention to the pictures I post here, you might have noticed that the walls of my sewing room are nearly covered in small quilts. It's a colorful room, for sure. I like it that way. My problem is that I'm running out of space even for small quilts. However, there is this little narrow strip of wall at the entrance to the sewing room. There's no door there...just an opening. This next image is what you see as you're leaving the sewing room. The space there is 12-1/2 inches wide and about 60 inches long.

So my idea is to use these blocks to make a narrow banner to hang there. I can line them up vertically like this:

I'll use the lavender fabric on the right below to make a narrow sashing between the blocks and a narrow stop border. And then I'll add a wider border using the floral on the left. The embroidered blocks are 8-1/2 inches wide (unfinished), and so I have about four inches to spare. I can make the stop border a half inch, and then I can make the floral border about 1-1/2 inches. It'll be a tight squeeze, but I think it will work out. I’d use the lavender for the binding. Also, I have a purple ribbon I'll add to the top to use as a hanger.

Okay, so I'm feeling better about that project now that I know how to finish it off.

Next, I needed to top-stitch the two blocks completed the day before for the Northern Wilderness project. This is the Canoe block.

The written pattern suggested doing raw-edge stitching with monofilament. There are a lot of little nooks, crannies, and curves in the applique pieces. I considered doing my usual machine blanket stitch, but I'm afraid that will be too much thread. Look at the mittens above, for example. Also, the rim around the canoe and the handle of the paddle. A blanket stitch would be too wide and "thread heavy" to look right. So, okay. I agree with the monofilament. It barely shows. You can see it in the image below.

I did the same thing with the Dragonfly block, but I used a brown thread for the sunflower. It needed some details to make the petals look right.

And now, the first two blocks are finished.

I was still hiding out in the sewing room by then. I decided to trace the design for my Sashiko piece. I'm using a Frixion pen so that the ink will disappear when I iron the finished piece. I've backed it with a white muslin. I can't start on this until the floss I have on order arrives. Hopefully it'll arrive sometime before the week is out. Here's your peek.

So that will be my next slow-stitching project. When I start on it, I'll just keep going until it's finished. 

In the meantime, I'm back to the first section of my white board. Next up is to quilt the Stitching Wisdom quilt. It's been relaxing on the machine since before we left on our trip to Alaska. It should be more than ready for quilting now.

And, as always, I can only spend about an hour per session doing free motion quilting if I want to avoid getting tendonitis in my wrist. So while I'm doing that, I'll also start to sew together the Cats in Pajamas quilt. This was my Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt in 2024. Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt:

Okay...so there's plenty to keep me busy. I'm hoping we'll be home early enough that I can get some sewing time this afternoon. What's on your agenda for today?

A Good Start

Good morning, my friends. I'm writing fast again this morning. I was writing fast yesterday in anticipation of Scott, the window guy, coming. It was past 10:00 a.m. when he texted and asked to reschedule for today. He said he was "having a morning." Frankly, I know the feeling. No problem. So today's the day. Hopefully he'll have a better morning.

Expecting him to show, I hurried and did my slow-stitching before getting myself around and dressed. I finished another name and place for the Shop Hop 4.0 quilt. Now I'm ready for the next go-round of these blocks.

Also, I started and nearly finished the 6th Sewing Room block. I might have finished it, but I was a little worried about the time. I'll finish it this morning.

When that's finished, I'll get a start of the first block for "Home is Where my Flock Is." It's traced and awaiting my hoop and needle.

My task for the day was to tackle the laundry. I had three loads. When I had that sorted and started, I could make my way to the sewing room. Sadie was my helper cat for the day. Knowing a bad man was coming to wash our windows, she decided to help from the safety of her Clubhouse. Smitty likes to call this the "He Man Woman Hater's Clubhouse." Sadie thinks that is purrposterous.

Okay, so the background was made for the Canoe block of the Northern Wilderness project. I started on the applique with the two water pieces. Easy enough.

But then...look at that. The next piece is positioned in such a way that proper placement is essential to avoid throwing off the rest of the design.

I decided to make the canoe and the Eskimo as a separate piece on my Teflon pressing sheet. I could see the placement diagram if I placed it under the pressing sheet. In that way I could ensure everything was where it should be.

When it was finished, it looked like this:

Some of you have asked me how this works. The applique can be "fused" to the Teflon pressing sheet, and then peeled up, leaving the fusible in place.

It can be peeled up in one piece.

And then moved to the block where I could fuse it down permanently. Ta-Da! Now this one is ready for top-stitching.

I'm making this quilt two blocks per go-round. Next up is the Dragonfly block.

These were the pieces I needed for the background block.

When all the component parts were made, it looked like this:

When the background was finished, it looked like this.

When I went to do the applique, I realized I'd made the background block wrong. If you look at the image from the book above, you can see that I rotated the four corners 180° from how they were supposed to be. Oh well. It works as it is. I'm not changing it. Don't tell anyone, okay?

Now both blocks are ready for top-stitching, and that will be my sewing goal for the day. 

With those finished, it will bring me to the "Quilter's Choice" section of my Whiteboard. For this turn, I'll work on the "Sashiko" art quilt piece. I've been kind of stuck on this because I'm waiting for an order of embroidery floss to arrive from an Etsy shop. These are precisely the colors I need for my project.

They're coming from Ontario, Canada, and they are taking positively FOREVER to arrive. I ordered them ten days ago. They didn't even ship until four days later, and now the tracking info shows me they've been "in transit" from the same location for the past six days. If they come on time, they should be here on the 22nd, but I'm not holding my breath until then. Either way, I have some things I can do with my art quilt project between now and then, and so I'll work on that. Sorry...no pictures...and no peeking.

All right. That's all I have for you this morning. Hopefully I can report clean windows tomorrow.