A Finish!

When I went into the sewing room this morning, I had exactly 1-1/2 of 7 flowers left to quilt on the Cornflowers table runner.

I had hoped to get this finished yesterday, but then ran out of time. It was first on my to-do list today, and it's finished!

Here's how it looks from the back:

I wasn't sure how well the quilting would show up, but I think you can get the idea. It was a little tedious stitching around all those little pieces because I had to cut thread every time, but I like the way the back looks.

And now it's taken up its place of honor on my breakfast bar. I guess that means we're ready for Halloween! And since in the 12 years we've lived in this house we've never had a single trick-or-treater (I'm not kidding. Not a single one!), any candy corn purchased will be for personal consumption. I'm sure candy corn has absolutely no calories whatsoever, so I don't need to look it up. Obviously, it's on my diet.

The only other thing I've been doing in the sewing room this week is to choose fabrics for the next three blocks of the Dream Machines quilt I'm making for this year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Invariably, someone asks me about this pattern, and so I'm giving you the link to the free pattern. I'm behind on the light green, orange, and now black/brown/gray blocks. These are the fabrics I've pulled. I need one fabric each for the machine, hand wheel, and thread color on each block.

That will be next on my list of sewing to-dos. And as long as I was pulling fabrics, I decided on my "Let's Book It" project for the month. I'm going to make a project from this book I picked up while we were traveling.

My new projects have been limited to table runners and small quilts, and so I chose this table runner for my fall table entitled simply "Leaves" in the book.

It's pieced and fusible applique. I've long had this fabric in my stash that I purchased for a project I gave up on years ago. The original project had sort of elongated NY Beauty blocks, and no matter how much I fussed and ripped and cussed, I could not get those blocks to lie flat. It would be interesting to try it again now that I have more experience, but I gave the pattern away a long time ago. It pissed me off, and it was so outa here. Anyway...I've been looking for something I could use this fabric in. I think this will be my backing.

I'll build the colors of my leaves on the quilt top around the colors in this fabric.

Yesterday I got my unruly hair permed. When I was finished with that, I stopped by the local grocery store for a flu shot. When they noticed how ancient I became on my last birthday, they offered me a shingles vaccine as well, and I jumped at the chance. Never had shingles, don't want to get it. The flu shot made my arm a little sore. The shingles vaccine did nothing. But with my sore arm, I probably shouldn't do the few little housekeeping chores I have on my list for this morning, should I? Nah.

Today I'm getting a pedicure, and I figure that will help my sore arm. When a girl's been traveling, she has serious beauty business to take care of when she gets home, dontcha know? And tonight is the training I'm required to complete to become an instructor with the Coffee Creek Quilters. I have to drive down to Salem for that (about an hour south). It will give me a chance to visit the quilt shop that gave me a $25 gift card for one of the quilts I entered in the Oregon State Fair this year. Because you know if there's anything I need more than a pedicure, it's more fabric.

And just to end off, I wanted to give you a link to this article published yesterday in the Washington Post. It seemed timely given we just finished our annual RV adventure. Read it if you're interested. It's entitled, "How I Stopped Worrying and Love RV-ing." My favorite paragraph is this: 

And bad things that happened felt more like funny movie scenes than annoyances. When the coffeemaker wasn’t securely stowed and flew across the cabin, or when the side door opened unexpectedly on the highway, we all had to laugh — after the danger had passed. All good hi-jinks for our “Vacation” sequel.

Yep...done that too.