Misty Morning

Good morning, my friends. There was just a hint of fog when we opened the curtains this morning. And, honestly, for all I complain about the squirrels, it still makes me smile when I look outside and see one or more of them surveying the landscape. No doubt he's looking around for some mischief to get into.

First on my list yesterday was to get started stitching the next names and places for the Shop Hop quilt blocks. I was able to finish both of them.

From there, I took a walk on the treadmill, and then went to work baking these Carrot-Apple Muffins with Citrus Glaze. They make a good before-breakfast snack. They're not too sweet.

Next up, I traced out two more blocks for the Raggedy & Friends project. These were created by Kaaren Johnston. The drawings are so cute. This was a free BOM back in 2012, but it doesn't seem to be available any longer.

And then I'd dragged my feet as long as I could. It was time to start quilting Jericho's Walls. Getting started on a large quilting project is always difficult for me, and I end up making excuses all along the way for why I should wait until tomorrow. Once I get started, it draws me in and I want to keep going, but starting always seems like a big and heavy door to walk through. I can soften the blow by focusing on thread colors, machine maintenance, and that sort of thing. For this quilt, I'm using a black Bottom Line thread in the bobbin. The Bottom Line threads gave me tension troubles when I first started using them. Now, with practice, I'm better at adjusting the tension. Now, I like them. As a 60-weight thread, I can wind lots of thread onto a bobbin.

On top, I'll use this 50-weight black cotton thread. This is my usual go-to thread. This quilt will have a solid black binding, and so I know I'm going to hate myself when I start hand-stitching the black binding with black thread. (And when I'm talking about the binding before even beginning the quilting, you can see that I'm a very optimistic quilter.)

And...wow. This quilt really had me stumped. I sat looking at this block for at least half an hour, tracing designs with my finger tip to see what I could do that wouldn't drive me crazy. And with it being such a large and heavy quilt, I didn't want to get too fancy either. Nothing was coming to me, and so I went to Facebook and found the Stash Buster Challenge group where the original block challenge was posted. This was their 2022 challenge. Doing a search for "2022," I was able to find what other people had done. I found a motif I thought I could do, and then went to work. And...ta-da! After so much teeth-gnashing over this, it was surprisingly easy to stitch.

 

Here's how it looks from the back. Happily, that first block landed on a solid fabric, making it easy to see.

And then, I just stitched across that whole row of five blocks.

So, let's take another look at this quilt. Just looking at this, I realize I have the quilt rotated 90° on the machine, so that I've quilted the vertical row that is third from the left. I'd actually intended to stitch the rows horizontally, but with such a big quilt, I got myself turned around.

So, I'll just keep it going in the direction I'm going. Next, I'll be quilting the next row to the right, which is the center vertical row. You can see that some rows have five blocks, and some have four. I'll do them one row at a time (trying not to hurt myself). At a row per day, I expect to have this quilt finished within two weeks. I've left it needle down at this yellow block, and that's where I'll start today.

And the quilting won't take all of my sewing time, and so when my one row allotment is complete, I'll start sewing together The Story of My Day quilt top. These are all the blocks I have for this quilt.

The kitties were no help at all yesterday. When I went downstairs, I found them lounging in the day's last rays of sunshine.

When he'd soaked up all the sunshine available, he retired to his catio to gaze upon his terrortory.

After dinner, I went outside to fill the bird feeders. And oh my gosh! The daffodils are blooming!!!

Here's another one over here. So far, I'm not seeing any of the newest colors, but I'm sure we'll be seeing them soon enough.

Also, I can see petals showing on the Star Magnolia.

There are more over here. These are some of the prettiest flowers in the garden. Sadly, they are easily bruised by the rain. I expect we'll see some open flowers today, but they won't last long with rain returning by tomorrow. I'll have to keep sharp to get a picture of them when they open today.

Also, I noticed the Bleeding Heart is showing signs of life. We had one up closer to the house, but it didn't return last spring. When we replaced our composite roof with metal a few years ago, the winter snow started sliding off the roof and piling up in many-feet-high drifts all around the house. The poor Bleeding Heart was buried and smashed too many times, and it finally gave up the ghost. Now, we have this new one planted out of harm's way. It was only replaced last spring, and so I'm happy to see it survived the winter.

So I'm moving along with my next embroidery project. This morning, I'll start on this 9th of 12 blocks for Grandpa's Bridges.

Our local feed store has a one-day sale going on today on wild bird seed, and so we want to go into town and take advantage of the reduced prices. (Wild bird seed can be expensive!) And no trip into town is complete unless we stop off at the grocery store to pick up the stuff that's accumulated on our list. So I'll be off now...I need to eat some breakfast and get in some stitching time. There's another busy sewing day ahead of me. Also, I'm itching to get outside and do some yard work. I might not have time to do everything I want to do today, so it's best I get started now.

All About the Slow

Good morning, my friends. Welcome to Monday and the start of a new week. My day was all about slow stitching yesterday. Stitching and preparing for stitching. At the top of my list was to hand-stitch the binding for the Easter Egg table runner, and that's finished now.

It was easier to see the quilting with the light from our living room windows. Here's how it looks from the back.

With the help of my excellent stitching cat, I was able to sit and stitch the whole binding in a single sitting.

And, while I love the bunnies on this runner...

They had to make way for the new kid on the table.

I was pretty sure I could finish off the last of the four Kitchen Herb blocks, and I did.

Here are all four blocks together. These will go on the list of "small quilt tops to finish," and I should be turning this into a finished quilt top within the next couple of weeks.

With those finished, I'll spend some time stitching the names and places for the next Shop Hop blocks.

Those won't take more than a day or two, and then I'll get back to Grandpa's Bridges. As long as I was doing slow stuff, I readied this block for stitching too. This will be the ninth of 12 blocks.

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

And, so far so good sticking with my goal of tracing these Raggedy & Friends designs one block per day. Two blocks down, ten to go. These are the designs for the second block. 

So, I'll trace the two designs for the third block today, but then, I simply must get a start on the quilting for Jericho's Walls. I'm no closer to knowing what to do with this than I was yesterday, but there are no more excuses. The quilting starts today.

It's a very large quilt at 73 x 89 inches, and so it's going to take a while. Probably I'll do one row of blocks at a time, but I'm only guessing. Since I have no idea how I'm going to quilt it yet, it might make sense to break it into different increments. One way or another, I'll get started on it today.

Also today, I need to bake something new for our before-breakfast snack. Today's baking project will be Carrot-Apple Muffins with Orange Glaze. I've made these before, and they'll give me a way to use the last Gala apple still hanging out in my refrigerator. There's one small housekeeping chore on the list for today, and I want to take a walk on the treadmill. As always, there's plenty to keep me out of trouble.

We're expecting some improvement in our weather by tomorrow. I'm itching to get outside and do some more yardwork. How are things in your world?

Grand Opening

Good morning, my friends. Well, I made good on my threat to attend the grand opening of the new quilt shop near my home. It was a sunny morning, which made it nice. I stopped off at the quilt shop, and then walked across the parking lot to the grocery store to pick up a couple of items we'd forgotten the day before. It was all very uplifting and convenient.

So, let's talk about the quilt shop: Bobbins and Bits. First, I hadn't planned to be there when the doors opened. When I saw this image on their Facebook page, I knew I'd chosen wisely. Life is too short to stand in line.

Instead, I chose to go down just after lunch when the crowd had cleared. And welcome! It must be exciting to turn on the "Open" sign for the first time.

Inside, it was bright and cheery. The supply of fabric was fairly limited. Mainly, it was bright colors and floral prints.

I was on the hunt for a background fabric to use for the Raggedy & Friends project. Also, I was keeping my eyes peeled for something to finish off the Kitchen Herbs quilt. I spotted this one within about a minute. I was wishing it came in green, but this was the only choice. I kept it in the back of my mind while I looked at the rest of their fabrics.

These colorful prints were pretty much all that was available. There were also some polka dots and stripes here.

At the back wall, they had a very nice supply of solids. Some of the gradations of color were so close, it was hard to tell any difference.

There were more on the other side.

On the shelves above, they had a couple of featherweights. These didn't appear to be for sale, although they do bill themselves as a "sewing machine" store in addition to being a quilt shop.

And look how cute this is. It was about 12 inches square.

It was available as a boxed kit from Riley Blake.

Oh, and cookies!!! One of my fellow shoppers agreed with me that it was probably illegal to walk past a tray of cookies without taking one. We took no chances, and we each snagged one.

To their right were these cute sewing chairs. The one with the cats...be still, my beating heart. If I could justify the expense, I'd have me one or two of these.

There is a "loft" area above the main floor. A sign pointing up the stairs identified it as a classroom. It would probably be a nice place to take a class.

So, I was glad I went, but look at this next picture. 

See at the far end of the shelves there on the right? They're empty. And, if you'll notice, the shelves with fabric are none too full either. The supply of fabric was very limited. I'm assuming they have more fabric on the way, but for now, it was hardly worth the trip down. There were no batiks, no juvenile prints, almost no novelty prints, and no pre-cuts. Interestingly, there is more shown on their website, but it wasn't visible inside the store. There weren't even any fat quarters cut. And the store is pretty small since the classroom takes up about 2/3 of the space available. Even if they fill all their shelves...even if they add more shelves...I don't see how this store can accommodate a large fabric inventory.

Since there were no fat quarters cut, I neglected to purchase anything for my Shop Hop quilt. I'll check back with them in a month or so, but they're going to have to stock more fabrics if they expect me to visit regularly. If there's fabric left from my the Kitchen Herbs section, I can use that in the Shop Hop quilt. So far, this new store is not even close to matching the inventory of my favorite local quilt shop. 

Nevertheless, it was worth the drive into town just so I could see these flowering plum trees in bloom. We have these lining our driveway at home too. At our elevation, ours are still weeks away from blooming.

So, I did purchase a few things at the quilt shop. I went back for the one on the right, pictured earlier. Then I chose a solid pink blender. On the left is the background fabric for my new embroidery project.

Back at home, I laid out the three completed embroidery blocks on the fabrics. I have in mind to first put a narrow green border around each block, and then I'll make up a sashing using the same background fabric I used for the embroidery. I have it all mapped out in my mind, but it will be at least a couple of weeks before I'm ready to sew this into a finished quilt top.

Okay so that was fun, even if it didn't meet my expectations. But now it was time to get busy quilting the Easter Egg table runner. I'd mulled over how to quilt the background, and I'd gone on a search to see how others had quilted it. It seemed the favorite choice was to stipple, and so that's what I did. I kept the same yellow thread that was already on the machine, and then I stitched a single yellow line around the inner edge of the border.

From there, it just needed a binding. Originally, I thought I'd use the same dark blue, but that seemed kind of boring. Instead, I went with this yellow polka dot.

Now it's sitting downstairs awaiting the arrival of my needle.

With background fabric in hand, I decided to get started tracing out the embroidered blocks for the Raggedy & Friends quilt. This will be my take-along project when we go to Alaska. My plan is to trace all the blocks and back them with stabilizer. It's a redwork piece, and I already have six skeins of the floss I'll need. The background is similar to what I'm using on Grandpa's Bridges, but this one is more on the white side, while the other is more cream-colored.

The whole quilt has 12 blocks. Nine of them have two embroidered sections, while three have just one.

I've set a goal for myself to trace the motifs for one block each day until I have them finished. At that rate, I should have them all done in about two weeks' time, and hopefully, I won't drive myself crazy in the process. So I started with this one:

Cute. I love the Raggedys. I love them almost as much as I love sock monkeys. This reminds me of one of my favorite Erik-as-a-baby stories. He had one of those stuffed monkeys that wears baby shoes and has a plastic face. (Searches The Google for an image.)

He liked it so much, and so as a meddling mom, I'm thinking...well, he might like a Raggedy Andy! So I took him to Toys 'R Us. He was sitting in the shopping cart, and I took a Raggedy Andy off the shelf and set it in the seat beside him. Without a moment's hesitation, Erik (about 18 months old) took the Raggedy Andy by the arm and threw him about 20 feet. Oke-kay. So, no Raggedy Andy. Got it.

Next up, this one:

Tracing these will fit well with the next project on my list...quilting Jericho's Walls. I'm still trying to decide what to do here, but I'm going to have to make up my mind soon.

The bulk of my sewing time today will be spent hand-stitching the binding for the Easter Egg table runner, but I'll take a look at this quilt today and make some decisions. I'm pretty well sold on using black thread. As for the design...that's still up in the air.

Okay, so breakfast is finished. Right now I'm going to work on stitching the fourth of four blocks for the Kitchen Herbs quilt. I expect to finish it today. After that, I'll get to work on the table runner binding. There are a couple of other things on my to-do list, but it's going to be a mostly sewing day. We're expecting some nicer weather next week. I'm hoping to get outside and do some more weeding. Also, I need to deadhead the hydrangeas. The season moves along, ready or not.