Just Ducky

Before I get started, Smitty would like to thank everyone for their many good wishes on this third Purrthday.

This morning, he helped me spin the random number generator to come up with a winner of his "Aged to Purrfection" mug rug:

#29--Becky!

Becky, I've sent you an email, so check your inbox!

Today I'm going to have more fun than I did yesterday. Today is mostly devoted to quilting. I am (honest, I really am) going to do one more housekeeping chore, and I'm going to walk on the treadmill. I've been really good about doing the treadmill, and I've done it three times every week since we got it. On Fridays, of course, I walk with my friend Sue, and so that's a good amount of exercise in a week. Last week, I needed to take a break from walking for a few days because I developed a "catch" in my foot near my ankle. It went away over the weekend, and so I'm back at it now.

As for the rest of my day, it's going to be quilting, quilting, quilting, and nothing else but quilting. Yesterday I got a surprisingly good start on the duck blocks. I had most of them finished before I needed to quit for the day. I outlined the ducks and stitched some water ripples around them:

I had hoped for a little more swirly stuff around the duck, but there isn't much room on that block. If I get too carried away, I'll end up with my lines crossing. That, of course, would put an end to the universe as we know it. Anyone who has ever seen the movie "Ghostbusters" knows that.

So here's how it was looking when I had stitched all the duck blocks: 

By the way, a few of you have asked if I'm going to give eyes to the ducks. That is a very good question, to which the answer is "no". I talked it over with my friend, and told her the options for eyes. Obviously, buttons or any sort of small embellishment that can come loose is not a good idea on a baby quilt. Another option was to satin stitch them or make large French knots. My concern about that is that this quilt will be subjected to lots and lots of machine washings, and I was afraid embroidery wouldn't hold up well to that. The final option I came up with was permanent marker, but I was opposed to that from a purists's standpoint. I have used marker on my quilts from time to time, but I don't like it. So...no eyes. These ducks will make their way through the world by heart alone.

Here's how it was looking from the back at this point:

Not a great picture, but you can see the back. Here's one a little closer up. The blue in this lower image is more true to the color of the fabric.

With that finished, I switched out my white top thread for yellow and took a stab at the duck's feet. What do you think?

The casual observer might not recognize them as duck's feet at first glance, but they look fine to me. Call them whatever you like.

Then I did a some wavy lines with "bubbles in the darker green sashings and some loopy circle bubbles in the lighter green. With that, I had quilted my first block set.

There are 12 block sets on this quilt, and so finishing the rest will take me most of the day. I'm having fun with this.

It rained pretty hard yesterday evening, and it was quite cold this morning...down to 34°F. when I went out to take this picture of raindrops on our bleeding heart. You can see the tail of my little furry friend off to the left there.

This being Tuesday, I'm linking up to:

This week's theme is "Prairie Points". I've only made one quilt with prairie points, this Cornflowers table runner for my Halloween table:

It would be fun to make this quilt again, only I'd like to make the flowers different rainbow colors and use green for the leaves and stems and turn it into a spring table runner. One of these days...someone needs to arrange for more days on the calendar, or at least more hours in the day. Will someone get on that, please? Anyway...you can read the post where I finished this little runner right here.

So that's about it from me for today. My day is mapped out. Time to get after it.