Hello Sun Rise

Today I managed to get reorganized and feel as if I can slip back into a routine.  It was my first day at home in what seems like a long time, and I am a person who requires more at-home time than most, I suppose.  In any case, it was a good day, and I feel more settled.

I got a good start on my newest embroidery project, Vintage Tin.  I'm finding that the floss is almost exactly the same color as the printed design, making it difficult to see.  The longer I work on it, the more I'm able to distinguish between stitched and not stitched, but I'll have to be careful not to miss anything.

Today was my day to water the outdoor flower pots and feed the birds, which I usually do every second day.  Smitty was hard at work with a mouse he'd found.  Apparently, he dropped it into the large heather ground cover and was digging around there for the entire time I was outside.  When I went back inside, I set about making the quilt sandwich for the Hello Sun quilt.  If I'm going to get it quilted before the end of the month, it's time to get started.

As I've said before, I won't tackle any quilt too large for me to sandwich on the ping pong table in my sewing room, and this quilt was almost too big.  It has a few inches to spare on each side, but I'm guessing this will be the largest quilt I've undertaken to quilt on my own.  It is 48 inches by 60 inches, which may not seem large to some of you, but it is about as large as I'm willing to tackle.

It meant clearing everything off the ping pong table so that I could spread it flat, and when I put it all back, I dusted and cleaned and reorganized, and the sewing room is looking quite tidy now.  It's always nice to have a nice clean space to work in.  I'm usually fairly well organized, but also usually a little dusty  and "thready" around the edges.

Then I got the machine set up for free motion quilting and went to work.  I finished this first block, but my picture was blurry, so I won't post it.  I'll show it to you next time around.

That was when Mike called to let me know he was on his way home, and I quit for the day.

Before I close this off, I'm ready to reveal my July doll quilt.  I feel quite certain my partner has received it by now, although I haven't heard from her yet.  She should have received it last Thursday.  Anyway...the July theme was "Stars and Stripes" and this is what I did.  It's my own design and a quilt-as-you-go technique.

I sewed the wonky stripes first, then added the blue at the top.  Being a quilt-as-you-go technique, I extended the seams for the stripes out about a half inch from where I expected the seam for the blue to go. Think about it:  those seams where the stripes are will show on the back, and so how am I going to make that look right?  By extending them a little farther than they needed to go, I was able to cross over them with the seam for the blue.  Then I removed any extra stitches on the back, and fastened everything down by using that fancy wavy decorative stitch on my sewing machine to finish it off.  All the lose threads are sewn down and there are no extraneous threads showing on the back.  (Clear as mud, right?)  Then I appliqued the stars and stitched around the outside to finish them off.

So that's it for me today.  Tomorrow I'm getting my monthly pedicure, and I'll go to the grocery store.  We have a dinner guest coming this weekend, and so I'll need to figure out what I'm making for that...not a clue at this point.

The weather was kind of strange today.  It was quite warm this morning and looked as though it would be a hot day.  Then around 10:00 a.m. it clouded over.  There has been no rain, but it did keep the temperature down.  Now it's looking like we might get a good thunder storm.  One never knows in Oregon.  

I hope you all had a good day today.  Did you get to do any sewing?