Moving Along

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This morning I had to leave the house early for a dental appointment. Not my favorite thing to do, but I had a good check-up (Look Ma! No cavities!) and my teeth are positively gleaming! A nice way to start off February and a new week. Now where did I leave the sugar?

Like so many others not particularly interested in football, I spent the day in the sewing room. Mike had the TV on, and so I was sewing with one ear on the TV. I don't really follow football, but I was glad the Seahawks won. We don't have a professional football team in Portland, and so Seattle is our best option. I just continued on my merry way with the I Spy section of the Wind in the Whiskers quilt.

For all I've whined about this quilt, I seem to have come to a place of peace with my one-step-at-a-time approach. Honestly, it makes such a big difference to avert your gaze from the entire template and focus on just one small section. It is a challenging project, but I become completely engrossed in the work and time passes very quickly.

When I left off on Saturday, I was here, with the first two flowers climbing the pole fused down.

Sunday, I just started working my way up, using a darker purple for the next one,

And continuing on up with the two shades of purple,

Until it was all done.

Then, I started on the flowers across the bottom. The pattern advised making one flower at a time, which works well with my one-step-at-a-time approach. When I had all the flowers for the left side done, I fused them down.

Aren't these fabrics beautiful? There is a reason these quilts are so compelling, and a reason they are so "fiddly". I can't remember who used that term, but it is a perfect description of them. Still, look at that iris. Doesn't it look like a real iris? Even Mike was impressed at the detail when I showed him, and he's not one to lavish praise. You might notice that the flowers on the extreme left are coming off the edge a little. That was by design. There will be a border there when the whole quilt is sewn together. I slid my pressing sheet halfway under them to avoid fusing them completely, and I also needed to leave enough space for the seam allowance. 

All that's left now is the right side flowers, and I'm going to get to work on those as soon as I finish here. For today, however, I seriously needed some retail therapy. The past 24 hours could have gone a little better, and then to follow it all up with a trip to the dentist just seemed like the black icing on the frozen cake. (I think it's good to think of sugar when dentistry is involved.) Anyway...I stopped off at a fabric store on the way home where I have a fairly significant store credit, and picked up these fabrics for the rose wall hanging I want to make. I needed some more greens for the sashings and borders. The one in the bottom right corner looks a little brown in this image, but it truly is a green. While I was at it, I picked up that blue. I wasn't intending to use it in the quilt, but I think a few little glimpses of it might be very pretty.

So that's it from me today. I don't know if I have enough hours in the day to finish up Wind in the Whiskers, but I'm going to give it a serious shot.