Saturday Sewing

When I got up this morning, I had a list of things I hoped to accomplish for the day. For one thing, I had a few housekeeping chores that required Mike's assistance. We did those first. One of those was to wrap Christmas presents, which has often been solely my responsibility in years gone by. The past two years, I've been less willing to do all the wrapping myself, and Mike has been more than willing to help. So the housework got done, and the Christmas presents got wrapped. I always feel a lot better about the whole Christmas season when the tree is up and the presents are wrapped.

There are still a couple of things to add that haven't arrived on Santa's sleigh yet, but we'll get those done as they come. I always think the tree looks less Charlie Brownie once it has presents under it. We left a space for Smitty in the back corner. He has taken after his predecessor cat, Krissy, in that he is very fond of napping under the tree.

So with those things accomplished, I was free to spend the rest of the day sewing. On my sewing list were two things. First, I wanted to finish top-stitching, embroidering, and embellishing Block One of the Raining Cats and Dogs quilt. And here it is.

I used the triple stitch on my sewing machine to embroider the window panes, and I hand embroidered the words "Pampered Pooch". The pattern calls for buttons for the door knob, dogs' eyes and dog collar, but I really like hot fix nailheads for that. Here's a close-up of the dogs.

Second on my list was to put a label and a sleeve on the Love Me, Love My Cat quilt so that I can get it shipped off to the Road to California show. I decided to do something a little fancier than my usual Printed Treasures label, and so I selected the cat label out of this book:

I wanted to use the fabrics from the quilt, and it was a little hard to decide how to get enough contrast for the cat to show-up. I think my cat ended up looking a little like he's wearing a Santa hat, but there you go. I'm happy with it.

And I made the hanging sleeve and pinned it to the back. I still need to do the hand-sewing, but that will need to wait until tomorrow. This quilt is only 38 inches wide, and so that won't take me very long.

Tonight, I'm trying a new recipe in the crockpot, so when I end here I'll go finish that off. All-in-all, it's been an easy-going Saturday. 

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get a few more blocks crossed off my list of December goals. And don't forget the kickoff linky party and giveaway for the 2014 NewFO Challenge goes live at midnight tonight. I hope I see your list of NewFO's for 2014 there!