Good morning, my friends. Brrrrrr....we're having some pretty darned cold weather here. It isn't cold enough to snow...yet...but I just about froze my tush off yesterday while I was out filling the bird feeders. I'd been out among the English to get my pedicure. There were no issues during my outing...which is unusual, because I can always find something to whine about once I leave the Three Cats Ranch. My toes were done, and I headed for home without incident. Once home, I got under the covers and pre-heated myself before going out to feed the birds. Then I had to put myself in reheat mode when I was back inside.
With all that taking up time in my morning, it was fairly late before I was able to get to my quilting. If anyone's interested, these are the threads I'm using on the Domestic Affairs quilt. In the bobbin, I'm using this white Bottom Line thread. I like the Bottom Line threads. They work well in my machine, and they're a 60-weight thread, which means you can wind a lot onto one of the M class bobbins.
On top, I'm using this 50-weight So Fine! thread. I've used this thread combination before, and the two play well together.
Checking the tension, it looked pretty good, and I was ready to get started.
Sadie was my guard cat yesterday. She's less attentive than Smitty, so if you're worried about foreign invaders, you might want to ask Smitty to take a turn.
She's really a quilter at heart, and so she's more interested in what I'm doing inside than she is in keeping tabs on what's going on outside.
So, before starting, I spent some time perusing the "fillers" I've saved to Pinterest. Nothing really excited me there, and so I went with my initial idea to start at the bottom middle and quilt a feather up each side. When I reached the top middle of the block, I quilted an echoing line back to the beginning, and then did the same thing on the other side. It allowed me to finish where I started. I could cut threads for both beginning and end and bury them in one fell swoop.
That worked out pretty well, and so I did the same thing on the remaining two blocks in that row.
For this project, I'm going to quilt in short stints, and try to do it without the splint on my left hand. When I finished this third block, I quit for the day.
Here's how it's looking from the back.
When I turned around, I found Smitty looking disappurrovingly at what I was doing.
He thought I should be doing some meandering kitty paws.
If you will move the chair closer to the mewchine, I'll be happy to demeownstrate.
So, I left it needle down in this position. My goal is to quilt one row of blocks per day. There are three more rows. When those are finished, I'll start with the sashings and cornerstones. Borders will be last. It will probably take me about a week to get it to binding stage.
It was late in the day by then, and so I didn't do any more sewing. However, I did check to see if I had the right fabric to start sewing together the Shop Hop 3.0 quilt.
As it turns out, I have plenty. The background fabric for those blocks was some I had left over from when I made the Calendula Patterdrip quilt. I remembered worrying at the time that I could run out of fabric, and so I'd ordered about a yard more. I should have plenty for sashings on this, and I'll probably add a narrow border around the outside to finish it off.
So, I'll probably get more done on the Shop Hop quilt today. I'll quilt three more blocks on Domestic Affairs, and that will keep me covered on the sewing front today. I'm making dinner this morning, and so there won't be much to do when it's time for dinner this evening. I'm going to make a
Tangy and Creamy Macaroni Salad. When I get macaroni salad at our grocery store deli, I'm often disappointed with the lack of flavor. This one is pretty easy and it's very tasty...the way it should taste, if you want my opinion. We'll have that along with these
Greek Style Chicken Wraps. I'm not sure I've made them before, but I saved the recipe from the Cooking Light Diet website when it was still active. I'm using spinach tortillas for mine. According to Cooking Light, each wrap has about 230 calories, so they're diet friendly. It'll help balance out the calorie-count in the mayonnaise-heavy macaroni salad.
Okay, so we've already had our breakfast. I've missed the last three days of workouts, and so I need to get back to that. It's time to get moving. But first, sitting and stitching. Sitting is an important way to warm-up before exercising, doncha know.