Intel Underneath my Needle

Today was the day I finally got to work sewing together the blocks for the Intel Underneath quilt. I've done no sewing for the past two days, preferring instead to spend the day lying on my heating pad getting a muscle spasm in my shoulder to settle down. It still feels a little threatening, and so I took lots of breaks today. Doesn't my should know I have goals? Deadlines to meet? How can I get all my quilting and sewing done with that going on? A little cooperation please.

So first I laid the blocks out on my design floor. I have a design wall, but it is always taken up with other projects. Go figure.

If you're curious about this block it is 18.5 inches square unfinished. It is the Taking Turns block by Monica Soloria-Snow. You can find her blog post about it right here. I obtained the block as a part of a block bee I participated in last year. Anyway, once I had the blocks laid out, I ironed them, and then went to start sewing them together; only, uh oh. I seem to have lost my chair.

I traded him the cat bed for the chair. A little bribe of catnip did the trick. And then, I spent the afternoon sewing the blocks together. I really like the way this is turning out so far.

So from there I haven't really done any planning, but today, after spending some time looking at it, I decided to put another black border around the whole thing, and then use this computer keyboard fabric

to make another 7-inch border all the way around the outside. That will bring the quilt to queen blanket size at 90 x 90 inches. I had a grand design for the back worked out, but I'm not going to have enough fabric to do what I intended originally. I'm just going to use a solid black and use some of the fabrics from the front to piece together a center panel, and that will be it. For quilting, I'm going to do a design similar to a design I found on Urban Threads called Bauhaus. You can click on that link to see it. 

So that's all the sewing I did today. In January the Love Me, Love My Cat quilt was one of the four viewers' choice winners at the Redwork Challenge that was a part of the 2014 Road to California quilt show. I won a $50 gift certificate from Bird Brain Designs, and I wasted no time going shopping. I chose this pattern called Snowmen & Reindeer. This is the picture from the pattern cover.

It also has a cute button embellishment kit that I purchased along with the pattern. I think when I get around to making this (assuming I live long enough), I would substitute pinwheels for those cornerstones to look like snowflakes.

Also this Friendship's Garden pattern. It can be done in colors or as redwork (or anything else you might want). I'm kind of partial to the multi-colored embroidery and I have some cute fabrics in my stash to use for the sashings.

So our weather has warmed up to a balmy (cough) 23°F with a windchill at 17°F. It's terrible weather for cats if you're Smitty. There's nothing to do but get into trouble inside. He sits next to the window watching it.

Gracie, on the other hand, thinks it's perfect weather for napping, which she does with great gusto.

The fireplace has been on almost nonstop, and that's all she cares about no matter what the weather.