A Day to Top

This morning I told myself I'd work one length of floss for my two current embroidery projects: Sarah's block for Lisa's Retirement Quilt and my latest quilted snowlady. I started with the block Sarah made for Lisa's Retirement Quilt. When I made it up yesterday, I had it this far:

This morning, I finished up one length of floss, and I said to myself, "Oh, what the heck? One more." Well, that was a lie because when I finished that I said to myself, "Oh, what the heck? One more." And on and on like that until the whole thing was finished. That's embroidery for you. It's like crack cocaine. One stitch and you're hooked until you've done ALL of it.

I was behind on these, and so it's good to have last week's block done. Also yesterday, I created the template for the one Lisa's friend Sherry created. I'll do that one next.

It's a little pixelated because it's been digitally manipulated to death, but I'll have no problem creating a block from it. My plan is to use the crayons again for shading, but I'll applique the little dresses. Oh yes, and I should add that Sherry, Lisa, and I all were in the 7th grade together in Southern California. Of course, Sherry and Lisa are much older than I am. You can tell because they are both grandmothers, and I'm not. Heck...Sherry even has a great grandchild. Need I say more? I think I've offered sufficient proof of my claim.

Today is a day at home...the first day at home in a while, it seems. I didn't have a lot of time to sew yesterday, but I have all the rows of blocks sewn together now. The bottom two rows still need to be sewn to the top half, and I still need to make the bottom sashing row.

Gracie was helping me with design decisions this morning.

When Smitty heard Gracie and me talking, he had to come down and plot trouble.

I've still been mulling over what to do about the borders and back for this quilt, and I'm still hoping to finish it without buying any more fabric. The Resident Engineer helped me choose these two border fabrics. I would have chosen a different one for the outer border, but sometimes I go with what the man says, lest I lose the ability to ask for his opinion occasionally. One must use one's opportunities for disagreement judiciously.

I have a large piece of fabric for the back, but I'll still need to piece it together to make it work. I'm hoping I'll have enough scraps from the front to get it accomplished. This seems to be a quilt of wishing and hoping. I'm still hoping I'll like it. Also, it still has buttons to be added to the sewing machines, thus:

These were purchased from Etsy. They're all alike and in multiple colors:

I'm thinking they'll spice things up quite a bit once they've been added. I won't do that until after it's been quilted, however. I don't want to be trying to quilt around those. Also, my domestic machine has a button foot, and it does a nice tidy job of sewing on buttons. I should be able to sew right through the quilted quilt without having it show any more than the little pucker you get when tying a quilt.

Of course, I've procrastinated on my housework all week, and so I'll be doing both things all day. It's a busy day I've mapped out for myself, so it's time to get going.