Cinco de Mayo

Good morning, my friends. I'm just home from a nice breakfast with Sue. Aside from that, not much has happened this morning. There hasn't even been time for slow-stitching. As I write, I'm waiting for Mike to drink a cup of coffee, and then we'll head off to the grocery store. We're eating dinner out tonight, but the afternoon will be my own. No plans except doing whatever I want to do.

So let's back up to yesterday, shall we? It was a luxuriously slow day. Not having to sandwich any more quilts put me in a good mood, right from the get-go. Since I'm focusing on getting more quilting action this year, it seemed like the best place to start was at the quilting machine. The Merry, Merry Snowmen are from Bunny Hill Designs.

One of the things I like about these patterns is that there are photographs of the quilt that show the quilting. Each block is shown on heavy card stock, and it gives me some ideas about how to quilt the blocks. You can see how they did the first two blocks in the image below.

Of course, it took me a bit to get the machine set up. I needed to switch out the foot for the regular universal foot. (My last project was using a square foot to quilt straight lines.) As usual, my quilting fairy godmother, Ila, made sure I had the right threads for the job. Thank you, Ila. On top, I'm using this Coats & Clark 30 weight variegated thread.

It's only slightly variegated, but mainly tan.

On the bottom, I'm using this light tan Omni thread from Superior Threads. This is a 40 weight thread.

It's all one color, and a good match for the quilt back.

Before I could start any stitching, Smitty checked outside for signs of any impending invasion. With his reassurance, I could quilt in complete safety.

So let's just check the tension. I flipped a piece from the back to the front. Top tension looks good.

And the back looks good too. It's always nice when everything is properly adjusted without having to fiddle with any knobs or screws.

There are nine blocks in this quilt. I started at the left edge in the middle with Block 4. First, I quilted around the edges of the applique.

Looking at the pattern image, the background here was just a simple filler. I didn't use the same one they'd used, but I found one on Pinterest that I liked. A hook and two loops followed by another hook, and on we go.

For this square in a square cornerstone, I did pretty much what they did in the pattern.

For this rectangle, they'd done a diagonal grid. I did a Christmas tree here. Sorry it doesn't show up very well. I've messed with the brightness and contrast to try to make it more visible.

And here, I outlined the snowman and then did a little looping line.

Here's how that looks from the back.

My goal was to do three blocks per day, but I spent so much time setting up the machine, I decided to stop after this first one. If I do two blocks per day from here on, I'll have this ready for binding by the weekend. When I left it yesterday, it was needle down on Block 5. If there's time today, I'll start there.

It was lunch time. I first went outside to check the watering on the annuals. While I was out, I took pictures of every blooming thing. This is my favorite rhododendron, pretty much in full bloom now. You can see the dogwood in the background.

There's a carpet of blue from the lithodora.

This azalea is so bright I have to back off on the saturation when I edit my pictures.

This rhododendron has more buds than open flowers, but it's trying its best to catch up with the one at the front of the house.

There are lots of flowers on the blueberries. I'm excited about these.

We're seeing some cherries on the cherry trees. They bloomed at a good time. We should have lots of cherries this year.

The first flowers are appearing on the tomatoes.

And after a long wait, the replacement poppies have finally sprouted.

This peony is still being a teaser. I'm thinking by next week, we'll see some flowers.

Here's another rhododendron with more buds than blooms.

Okay, and on the slow-stitching front, I finished Block 7 for Le Jardin.

My first stop in the sewing room was to trace the Santa Quartet.

After that, I wanted to put borders on the block for Le Jardin, but I first fixed the border on the previous block. I neglected to add the cornerstones to this originally, and so I did that first.

Sadie helped me with that.

And then I could put borders on Block 7. This one will be in the middle of the quilt, and so it has cornerstones at all four corners.

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

While we watched the news last night, I took the first stitches on the Santa Quartet.

Smitty was exhausted after a day of guarding the furtress. I found him napping in the afternoon sunshine.

Okay, so that brings me to time to head out to the grocery store. It's not my favorite thing to do on this, my birthday, but Mike's birthday is Thursday, and need to pick up some things to make his birthday breakfast of Eggs Benedict. Since I have PT tomorrow, today will have to work. And so I need to be on my way. Happy Cinco de Mayo, everybody. Don't drink too many margaritas tonight, okay?

Final Four

Good morning, my friends. It gives me great pleasure to announce that all the quilt sandwiches are finished. It feels as if I've been given a new lease on life. There were just four more to finish yesterday. First up was The Story of My Day.

Next...the Kittens quilt. This one was fun to stitch.

Next was the fourth and final Shop Hop quilt.

And, finally, happily, the recently finished Land & Sea quilt.

They're all stacked up in the sewing room now. There are 16 pictured here.

And then, the Merry, Merry Snowmen are teed up on my quilting machine ready for me to get going on the quilting. Probably I'll start on this today. As I've said, I'm making quilting my focus for the year as I try to get some of these old projects finished up. As much as I can, I'm going to try to do a little quilting every day. Today seems like a good time to start.

That would have been enough for a day, but I still had those unfinished headrests bothering me. After sitting for a while, and in the last few minutes before I needed to start dinner, I decided to sew the Velcro onto the headrests. I used a blanket stitch for this. With the right kind of sewable Velcro, this was a quick job.

Here's how that looks from the front.

And then we took them out to the RV to attach them to the recliners. As a reminder, this is how they looked without the covers.

And there we go. It's not a perfect solution, but it's an inexpensive one.

Okay, so today will be a day of what passes for normal. I have a few things to catch up on. For one thing, I haven't done my PT exercises this week, and I have PT again on Wednesday. I'll do those today. Although the sandwiching process was plenty physical, I was able to do it with virtually no shoulder pain. Also, I need to make May's orange inverted star for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. As you might guess, housework has gone begging over the past several days. I have one easy housekeeping chore, and I need to do some laundry. 

Probably, tomorrow's post will be later in the day. It's my birthday tomorrow, and my friend Sue has invited me to breakfast. Also, Mike and I need to make a short grocery shopping trip, and then we're eating dinner out tomorrow night. If I can squeeze in time for blogging, it will mostly likely be after lunch. 

It's going to be good to get back to some "regular" sewing today. I'm looking forward to it. First, though, slow-stitching, as always. Le Jardin is on the home stretch, and I expect to finish it this morning.

Quilter's Dozen

Good morning, my friends. I managed to get five more quilts sandwiched yesterday, bringing my total to 13. And you're all familiar with the term "baker's dozen," right? But just in case that's an American thing, I'll just say that a baker's dozen is a dozen plus a bonus of one. And I figure, why should bakers have all the fun? If I've got 13 quilts sandwiched, then I'm calling it a "Quilter's Dozen," and I'll fight anyone who says I can't co-opt that term. (Gazes menacingly around the empty room.)

Before I could do any of that, though, I decided to do my kitchen things. I started by making good on my threat to make an Orange Upside-Down Cake for Two. I've linked to the recipe for the full-up version of the cake. The full-up version is baked in a 9-inch round cake pan. To make it a cake for two, simply make half the recipe and bake it in a 6-inch round cake pan.

We enjoyed that last night with a dollop of whipped cream. It's actually a cake for four, and so we'll have the rest of it tonight.

On the quilt sandwiching front, I sandwiched Ruth's Legacy. This quilt was originally named "When Quilter's Gather." This style of piecing was the brain child of Ruth McDowell. When she passed away in 2024, I decided to rename the quilt to "Ruth's Legacy."

Next was Light Frame. This was just a lame attempt to make a dent in my scraps. Didn’t work.

After that Shop Hop 3.0. Here's another one I'll bet you forgot all about.

And, finally, Girls' Getaway.

There was still quite a bit of time left in the day, and so I decided to sandwich the smallest of the bunch...the Kittens in Teacups. This quilt was small enough I only needed one plywood sheet to sandwich it. It's going to make a nice addition to the stairwell Mewseum.

That leaves me with just four more to do today. Yahoo! And I'm far enough along that I no longer fear running out of supplies. I have plenty of batting and spray baste to finish them off.

So, did I get any kitty help with that? What do you think? I found Smitty crashed out on the couch in the living room.

Sadie was hiding out in her studio apartment, showing me her best side.

In other news, I'm closing in on a finish for Block 7 of Le Jardin. Probably I won't finish this today, but tomorrow wouldn't be out of the question.

It's time to think about what I'll stitch next. I'm at the "short" project on my whiteboard.

So I asked Mr. Random to choose my next short project. He chose #16.

That happens to be this Santa Quartet Table Runner from Bird Brain Designs.

I have an idea someone gave this to me at some point in time. I'm sorry I can't remember who it was. If it was you, then thank you. Here's the image from the pattern.

It calls for one ball of Perle cotton. I have five skeins of this DMC red, and so I'll use that.

There are several things on my sewing to-do list when I finish with these quilt sandwiches. First of all, I want to get started quilting the Merry, Merry Snowmen. Also, I need to finish those headrests. (I'll do that first.) Also, I need to make May's inverted star for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I need to trace the Santa Quartet and get it ready to go. Probably all of that will need to wait until tomorrow. Today...it's all sandwiches all the time. I might be tempted to pop open a bottle of champagne when it's all finished.