For Chicago and Philadelphia

Good morning, my friends. As I look out the window, I see blue sky. The sun is just coming up, and it's looking like it'll be a pretty nice day today. Mike will be spending the afternoon in the dentist's chair. All I can say is better him than me. I had my day last month. It was cold and gray yesterday, but I still got outside to clean up the herb garden a little bit. A naughty gopher dug a trench all along the sidewalk that lines the garden, and so we've ordered more gopher stakes for him. They emit a buzz that is annoying to gophers, and that'll fix his little red wagon. If he had a wagon. Which I highly doubt.

There was plenty of time for sewing yesterday, and I was able to finish off two more blocks for the Northern Wilderness project. First, I needed to finish making the background for the bear block.

When the applique was finished, I turned my attention to the top-stitching. I started with the eagle. I'm using a monofilament thread and a 60/8 microtex needle to stitch along the edges of the applique. It was slow going with so many nooks and crannies.

Smitty helpfully held the bear down while I worked with the eagle. He wanted me to remind you that he wrestled some bears while we were in Alaska, and this one was a total pushover.

When the eagle was finished, I worked on the bear. By day's end, both were finished.

Here are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

And that brings me to the end of my list of WIPs. Next I'll move to the "Quilter's Choice" section of my white board. In this case, I'll be starting the next challenge quilt for The Endeavourers art quilt group. The prompt is "Motion." As a reminder, these are my fabrics:

The project I'm working on really requires full-width folded off-the-bolt fabrics. I'm working with scraps and fat quarters, which means I'm going to have to be creative with my piecing. I'll end up with seams where I don't want them in order to get the length I need. That will be undesirable, and so I'll have to replace those sections with whole pieces. It'll all make sense when I can reveal it next February. It's a long time to wait, I know.

My Embroidered Garden is progressing faster than expected. Probably I should be thinking about tracing the next 12 motifs for the Tiny Treasures project.

And how could I not make good progress with such a faithful foot warmer by my side.

So today will be much the usual fare. I want to get in a workout, and I have a housekeeping task on the day's calendar. Aside from that, it'll be mostly sewing. Just now it's time for some breakfast, and so I'll leave you to your day. I hope it's a good one.

A Bear of a Block

Good morning, my friends. There I was, sewing away in my sewing room, minding my own business when mayhem broke loose. I nearly lost my life being mauled by a bear block. Allow me to explain.

First, Sadie showed up to help.

Nothing I was doing interested her, and so she went back upstairs. I'm told she was giving a TED talk about how to ready one's winter body for next year's bikini season.

That was okay because Smitty was there to help.

He assisted me while I finished up the applique for the eagle block.

And there it is. It still needs top-stitching, but I set it aside while I made the bear block.

So, this is pretty much all the instruction you get with these quilt blocks. There's also a diagram showing the positioning of the lettered pieces, but no clues about how to sew them together. It didn't matter with this bear paw block. It's pretty obvious how it goes together. To explain the notations below, where triangles are involved, it gives the size of the pieces if you cut them as they'll finish, but in parentheses it suggests cutting them larger and then trimming them to size. 

For HST's, the cut-larger-and-trim-to-size method gives me the best chance at accuracy. And so I cut them to three inches, bisected them from corner to corner, and then sewed them together. Then, I trimmed them to 2-1/8 inches.

From there, I sewed them together. They're all oriented in the same direction, right? Wrong. No. They're different, but that didn't stop me from sewing half of them together in the wrong orientation. But there's no crying in sewing, and so I took them apart and resewed them correctly.

And that was all well and good, except when I tried to sew them to the larger pieces, they were too big. If I'd read to the next column in my book, I might have seen this. Oy. The finished size was to be 1-3/4 inches. Not the 2-1/8 inch I'd trimmed them to. 

Okay, and so I took them all apart. Again. And then I trimmed them to the proper size. Again.

Then, I sewed them together in groups of two, checking carefully to make sure I'd oriented them properly. When they were sewn together, I took them to the ironing board to press. Aaargh! Here, I was very tempted to pick up my scissors and stab myself in the jugular vein.

Happily, I resisted the urge to end my life right then and there. I took that one apart. Again. And then sewed it together correctly. From there, I could finish sewing them into four paws.

And then I could finish sewing the whole thing together. Sheesh. That took pretty much all afternoon.

It still needs to have larger pieces sewn all around to create the background for the bear applique, but I decided to quit while I was ahead. It seemed dangerous to continue. Talking myself down off the ledge, I went upstairs to get started on dinner. I'll get going on the bear applique today.

The only other sewing I did yesterday was to take the first stitches on My Embroidered Garden. This is going to be fun to stitch.

When I finish here, I'll continue on. 

It's a gray day today, but only a slight chance of rain. I want to get outside and clean up the herb garden some. Weeds are springing up, and the dead chives are splayed out all over the ground. I want to hoe the weeds and pick up the dead stuff. Next year's crop of chives will appreciate it if I clear away the detritus and give them access to sunlight. That'll be my day's workout effort. Probably, I'll fill the bird feeders while I'm out too. 

Thanksgiving is approaching, although it's late in the month this year. Mae and I agreed that we'd do Thanksgiving here, and they'll do our family Christmas feast. Just this morning, I made a list of menu items for our Thanksgiving dinner. It's early to be thinking about that, but somehow making lists keeps the chaos in my brain toned down to a dull roar.

So that's all I have for you today. It's the start of a new week. Time to get after my slow-stitching.

Sunny Skies

Good morning, my friends. Gee, it's nice to see some blue sky and sunshine. It was a nice day yesterday, and it's looking like it will be a nice day again today. I was able to get outside for a while. The last dahlia is cut back now. I'd hoped some of the other buds might open, but they were still in tight green marbles when I looked at it. No chance they'll bloom before the first frost sets in. 

The only thing to do now is to look forward to spring when things will start blooming again. I noticed the herb garden has a lot of dead stuff littering the area, and so my next task will be to do a little clean-up there, and other areas as well. And, of course, the place is littered with wet leaves right now. Gardening season is coming to a close, but we're not there yet.

As expected, I finished off the 13th of 21 stitcheries for the Raggedy & Friends project.

Eventually, I'll sew that into the eighth block for this project. For now, I'll set it aside while I work on the next block for the Northern Wilderness quilt. This is the one I'm working on now.

The block was tricky to sew together. The pattern tells me what size to cut the pieces, but there are no instructions for sewing it together. I sewed this one together by hook and by crook, but I lost some of the points. Oh well. It's the best I could do, and so by my definition, it's good enough.

The applique will cover up some of those cut off points. I was only just getting started on the applique yesterday when I needed to stop. Today I'll start adding the eagle.

This is how much help I got from the kitties yesterday. They spent the afternoon just as you see them here.

Kitties like quilts. Any questions?

Smitty gave us a bit of a scare last night as we were getting into bed. Usually, he's there on the bed for his bedtime snuggles. He didn't join us for our evening television watching, and then he didn't come for his pre-bedtime treats. And then he was MIA for his snuggles. Hm...where is he?

So I wanted to make sure he wasn't locked in somewhere, and I went looking for him. I looked positively everywhere for him. Under things, on top of things, behind things, inside of things...he was nowhere to be found. I looked for at least ten minutes before heading back to the bedroom. "I can't find Smitty anywhere," I said to Mike. We thought he might be in his catio, and I shined a flashlight through the window, but couldn't see him. If he was in the area right next to the exterior wall of the house, I wouldn't be able to see him without going outside. So, Mike went out the back door to see if he could find him there. Lo and behold, he was outside!!! It looks as if a bit of the fencing has come loose on the catio walls, and he snuck out. I'm assuming he was off playing poker. That's what he's usually doing when he goes missing. 

So now the door to the catio is closed off until Mike can repair the fencing. Sheesh. I'm glad I checked. We get the kitties in at night. He's spent a few nights outside when we couldn't round him up, but I can probably count those times on one hand. Of course, the kitties are 'spicious whenever we close off any of the doors in the house, and so they're laying low this morning.

That's about all I have for you today. This morning, I'll get started on My Embroidered Garden. It's a small piece, but it has lots of fancy stitches, and so it'll take me a while to finish it.

It's a laundry day, but that won't keep me from my sewing. I'm hoping to finish off the applique for the eagle block, and then I'll get to work making the bear block below. I've made the bear paw block before, and so I don't expect to have as much trouble with it, despite the lack of instructions.

All right. It's time for our Sunday morning pancakes, and then I'll get busy with my stitching. Have a good day, Everybody. I hope the sun is shining in your world today too.

Seeing Stars

Good morning, my friends. We had a little let-up from the rain yesterday. By afternoon, the sun was shining and we had a blue sky...a welcome sight. We were out in our hot tub last night, and we could see stars for the first time in many nights. This morning, the sun is shining, and there isn't a cloud in the sky. For sure, I'm going to get outside and cut back that last dahlia today. I might have done it yesterday while I was out filling the bird feeders. But there was a drizzle falling, and that was enough to discourage me from anything more than feeding our hungry birds.

Interestingly, I found a forest of fungus in my wanderings. This one was the size of a salad plate with an indentation that pooled water...a nice little birdbath for very small birds.

These look like the little soda straws that come with a cocktail. They're about an inch tall.

The largest of these next ones are about the size of a dime.

And then there are these. They aren't as cute as some of the others.

Under one tree was a veritable army of these little guys. The largest are about the size of a quarter.

They look like little parasols.

Back inside, I took the first stitches on the Raggedy & Friends piece. 

I expect to finish it this morning, and then I can get started on my "short" piece, My Embroidered Garden.

My next stop was to bake this Pumpkin Skillet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting For Two. The original recipe for this cake appears right here. Mine was a cake for two, and baked in an 8-inch cast iron skillet. For my version, I scaled the recipe to one-third of the original. Here's how it looked when I took it out of the oven.

After it cooled, I frosted it with the cream cheese frosting and sprinkled some candied walnuts over the top. I happened to have some candied walnuts on hand. The recipe lists them as "optional," and you could also use regular toasted walnuts or pecans. We thought the candied version added a sweet little crunch. I'd do that again.

My only complaint about this is it didn't rise much. You can see in the image below, it's only about an inch high. And if you think about it, it fits the definition of a pancake in every way. It was delicious, however. We liked it a lot. The cake is nicely moist...like pumpkin pie in cake form. 

I'm suspicious about the rise. Cutting the recipe to one-third meant there wasn't much batter, and so I mixed it up with a whisk. I'm thinking if I'd used an electric hand mixer, it might have whipped more air into the batter and given a higher rise. I'll make this again at some point, and I'll try that to see if it makes a difference.

There's about 2/3 of a can of pumpkin left. Now I'm trying to decide whether to make some Brown Butter Pumpkin Cookies or, in the alternative, some Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies. As I'm writing this, I'm kind of leaning toward the latter. I mean...oatmeal. They're practically health food, right? What's your pleasure?

Okay, so finally, finally, finally, I could get some work done in the sewing room. Sadie read yesterday's blog post, and she was excited knowing we were going to make another block for the Kittens in Cups. It's her current favorite project.

But first, I procrastinated by choosing fabrics for my newest art quilt piece. Prompt this time is "movement." I know what I'm going to do. These are the fabrics I'll be using:

Any guesses?

Okay, and then Sadie was ecstatic when we finally started cutting pieces for the Kittens in Cups block.

This is my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project. All the colors have been chosen for the year through October. For November's and December's blocks, I'll be picking from my "multi-color" bin of fabrics that don't easily fit into any color category. These are the pieces I'll need to complete this block. 

The background pieces are in the upper right of that image above. Those were all cut back in January when I made the first block. They're labeled and pinned together. It was gratifying to be using up the last of them as I sewed this together.

Here's my finished block for November. It's the first time I've been able to make this block with no mistakes and no swearing.

Here are the blocks I have for this quilt so far. Eleven down, and one to go.

Okay, so I have my usual list of agenda items today. There's one housekeeping chore. I didn't do any sort of workout yesterday, and so I'll be visiting the Bowflex today. When I'm ready to head into the sewing room, I'll be making two more blocks for the Northern Wilderness quilt. These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Today, I'll start with this Eagle block:

When that one is finished, I'll make the bear block.

I don't expect to finish either one of these today, but sometimes I surprise myself. Just piecing the background block together can be complicated, however, and so I'll consider it a win if I can get to the applique portion.

It's good to see some dry weather. For sure, I'll get outside for a bit today. What's going on in your neck of the woods?