Caution: Men Working

Matthew and Mike worked all afternoon yesterday on Matthew's senior project for school.  With them otherwise occupied, it was pretty much a lazy day for me.  I did a little embroidery in the morning, then went downstairs and did the cutting for one of my February NewFO projects.  This is a table runner from the Jan/Feb 2013 issue of McCall's Quilting.

These are the fabrics I'm using, now all cut out.

I had a chance to look at the pattern yesterday.  If you can see it, the pointy part of the heart is actually a nine patch and the two "humps" of the heart are half snowball blocks.  It looks pretty simple to put together, and so it shouldn't take me too long...if my sewing machine ever comes back from the shop.  I'm getting desperate now.  I may get out my spare machine, even though I hate using it.  Besides, getting down on my hands and knees to hook up the spare machine is the quickest way to get my Bernina home from the shop.  I've never been a smoker, but from what I'm told, the quickest way to get your lunch to come in a restaurant was to light up a cigarette (when smoking was still allowed in restaurants).

Once I had the cutting done for that, I set about organizing all the floss I purchased for my Quilting Snowladies.

Want to see what 73 skeins of embroidery floss looks like?  Here you go:

I probably have twice as many skeins as I need, but that's okay.  They're inexpensive at 39 cents per skein.  I figure if I run out and have to drive into town for more, I'll spend more than that on gas.  Since I haven't made a project with so many different colors and so many skeins, I wasn't sure how I was going to keep them organized once I had the colors all divided up and together in piles.  I decided to use large safety pins to hold the colors together.  That seemed to work pretty well.  When I'm actually using a skein, I wind them onto the little plastic "spools" that you can find at JoAnn.  If you look at the center top white floss in the image above, you can see one of them.  They work pretty well.  They come with a large ring to keep all the "spools" together, but that is already in use on another project.

Anyway, this image below is the first block I'm going to do shown along with its various floss colors.  Since the muslin fabric I have on order for the foundation hasn't arrived yet, I can't really start on this right away, even though I'm itching to get at it.

And then this morning, I finished up the eighth of eight stitcheries for the Love Me, Love My Cat quilt.  These have been so much fun to work on that I'm almost sorry to finish the last one.

Here are all eight blocks, now finished.

Sorry to be standing in my own shadow while taking these pictures.  Here is what the finished quilt looks like.  I still need to make those four sawtooth stars before I'll be ready to start sewing the blocks together.

These are the fabrics I'm using.

And for finishing all eight stitcheries:

So with that finished, I was left with a bit of a dilemma.  I'm still awaiting the next of the Vintage Miniature Sewing Machine blocks (and getting nervous about how late it is too).  Tomorrow, I'm going to meet up with  Quilting Babcia who writes the Amity Quilter blog.  She and I live relatively close to one another, although neither of us is really very close to anything.  Tomorrow, we are meeting for lunch and then going together to a meeting of the Piecemakers Quilt Guild in McMinnville, Oregon, which is about a half hour down the road from where I live.  She tells me it is a small guild, and it might be just what I've been looking for.  I'm giving it a try anyway.  Quilting Babcia and I have corresponded quite a bit, and so I'm looking forward to meeting her in person.

Anyway, all of that to tell you about my dilemma, which is that I want to take some handwork with me tomorrow.  I can't start my Quilting Snowladies until my fabric arrives.  I could move onto the next blocks of the Gardener's Journal quilt, but I was really wanting to work on something new.  I decided to look at all the small projects I've printed off at various times.  I was looking for something I could stitch up quickly just to pass the time until the fabric arrives and my sewing machine comes home.

Of course, my little buddy was all about helping me pick something else...and the catnip is always a draw besides.

So I ended up pulling out this small project created by Wendy over at Sugarlane Quilts.  You can find Wendy's pattern right here.

I cut a scrap of fabric 7 inches x 10 inches and drew out the design.  I'll use little dribs and drabs of leftover floss to make it, and it should only take a couple of hours max.  I don't have a plan for it, but I'll use it for something...maybe a mug rug, or a little mini wall hanging, or a quilt block...lots of ideas for it.  Also, I have this fabric to use as a border and/or a back.  I'm using floss in the colors that are in the fabric.

So with that, I'm off to plant my tomato seeds.  Matthew and Mike are going to be doing some more work on Matthew's project today, so I'm on my own again for the afternoon...which suits me just fine.

Oh yes, and I'm linking up to:

and then to: