All Quilting, All the Time

Over the weekend, I was a good little housekeeper and got all caught up on my housekeeping. Today I have no place to go and nothing to do. I started a recipe in my crockpot this morning, this Busy Day Slow Cooker Chicken Taco Soup. I haven't tried it before, and so I'll have to let you know whether we like it or not. For starters, I thought it needed more chicken broth, and so I added twice as much as that listed. Beyond that, who can say? And even though I'm not doing anything important (paid work, you might say), I am going to have a busy day quilting.

The Gardener's Journal quilt is still on my to-do list, although I've taken a break from it lately. I'm quilting it as a sort of quilt sampler, and with all those little bits and patches, it's not always easy to think of something new to add. I decided to give my imagination a rest for a while, but today I'm coming back to it. I already know how I want to quilt the borders, and that's a big part of what remains. So far, I've quilted all of what is inside that red line in the image below.

My plan of attack has been to work from the middle toward the bottom. Eliza is a sit-down machine, and so I wanted to quilt the portion that would be hanging off the table in my lap before quilting the top. I think for today, I'll start over there on the middle to bottom right and then work my way toward the left. If I can finish all but the top portion today, I'll feel as if that's a day well spent. A day even better spent would include some of the upper reaches of the quilt.

* * * * * A line indicating the passage of time. * * * * *

Did you like that? On television, that was where the picture would get all wavy like a dream sequence. Consider it my blogger's version of a commercial break, without the annoyance of actual advertising.

After spending a couple of hours on this, I'd completed all the parts you see within the green line. 

At that point, I wanted to take a little break. When I came back, I finished up the rest of the lower left corner.

Here are some of the things I did. I took the first one from a tutorial by Lori Kennedy at the Inbox Jaunt.

I wasn't really sure what to do in the one below, and so I just quilted very close to the tree and gave it some leaves.

For these little one-inch squares, I've pretty much stuck to the same design throughout the whole quilt. I know this has a name, but I can never remember what it is....something starting with "T" I think. Doing so many of these has given me practice hitting my mark.

This is one of the designs I saw on Pinterest recently. It was fun and easy to stitch, and I might decide to do this in the border.

I wasn't sure what to do with the Garden Show ladies, and so I just stippled around them.

These next two are my own adaptations of some others I saw on Pinterest.

And the one below is sort of a combination of the two above.

I wasn't really sure what to do with the sprinkler here, and so I just gave it some more water and quilted some pseudo wood grain into the fence.

As I'm looking at that one above, I'm thinking I might go back and do a loop-de-loop around the bush on the right, where the little pink French knots are.

Then I did a dragonfly...a little off-center, but oh well.

Then I did a little rock wall here:

While I was eating my lunch, I took notice of this design on my napkin. Hmmmmmm.

Yes, I did.

About that time, my little furry helper showed up. 

Got any window shade cords I can chew?

Oh, don't mind me. Your quilting won't disturb my napping place.

Speaking of cats, I thought I'd put some bird tracks around the bird house.

Then I put some hearts in the corners of this tiny little embroidery motif.

I guess my quilting disturbed him. He decided to move over onto the quilts-to-be-quilted pile.

And that was our quilting day. Not a bad day at all.

I have another do-nothing day tomorrow, I think. If I'm terribly energetic (emphasis on the "terrible"), I'm going to try to get myself to the pool for a swim. Ever since our trip in September, I've had a hard time re-establishing a routine where swimming is concerned. I'm still determined, just not very motivated.

How did you spend your Monday?