Serious Busy-ness

This morning I've been continuing on free motion quilting Joseph's Quilt. It seems as if I've completely put my current embroidery block on hold, but I'll get back to it this coming weekend. I've been running around so much that it's forced me to pick and choose what I'm going to do in the morning, and embroidery has fallen low on the list.

As for my quilting, Joseph's Quilt has no recipient in mind...no purpose in mind...nothing. And that has freed me up to experiment with it. I imagine it will end up somewhere around the house as a nap quilt...either for humans or cats...it really doesn't matter. My quilting has been a series of experiments. This is what I've done so far.

I think that design in the checkerboard areas has a name, but I don't know it. Anybody? If you know, please chime in. It's kind of fun to do, but hard to keep the direction straight. It's also surprisingly hard to hit the corners accurately.

More practice, I figure...and it works equally well with triangles.

I'm letting the fabrics and the shapes direct my designs. This one seemed to emanate from the center, and so I did a sun...my favorite design. Since the center square had checked fabric, I quilted a grid there.

This one was a little hard to decide, but I saw stripes, circles, and frogs' feet.

I've quilted turkey tracks before, and so I figured frogs' feet weren't so different. The first ones weren't very good.

But then I figured out that they're really just a triangle with toes.

I'm just doing a back and forth curvy design in the borders and a pointed grid in the cornerstones.

And some really terrible stitch in the ditch around each block. I've figured out that it's easier to stitch in the ditch if I quilt the sashing and cornerstones first.

There are 13 blocks set on point in this quilt. I have the center five blocks quilted now.

Eight more to go. I'm kind of in a groove, and I'd really like to just continue on. There are quite a few housekeeping chores to catch up on, however. Nothing major, but the cumulative time is going to be more than I want to save for the weekend. It's time to get at that so I don't have to spend all of Saturday and Sunday catching up.

Today I'm linking up to:

While I was out watering this morning, I peeked into the greenhouse to see how things are coming along. I decided to pick some of the red tomatoes. There aren't enough here for anything yet, but there are lots more turning. I'm thinking by Monday or Tuesday next week, I'll have enough for a batch of salsa.

We're taking the boat out on the river today. Mike was out last week and the water was 76°, so very nice for swimming. We haven't had the boat out much this summer since we've been using most of our free time for camping. It's a good day for it...not too hot.

So that's it from me for Friday. I hope you have a nice weekend planned for yourself. I'm going to be quilting.