On the Border

The whole day was devoted to sewing yesterday, which was quite a treat. I did take time in the morning to walk on my treadmill. After that, sewing, sewing, sewing. Before my treadmill walk, however, I stitched up the latest block for the Vintage Kitchen wallhanging.

With that one finished, I was clean out of hand-stitching projects. Momentarily, it seemed as if it was a good time to get those hanging sleeves sewn on two of my quilts for the Oregon State Fair. "Nah," I said. Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow, especially when there are fun new projects to start?

Yes, that's right...a new project. I've been waiting for weeks to get started on the Hocuspocusville quilt from Crabapple Hill Studios. It will look something like this when it's finished.

This pattern has been on my shelf for at least a couple of years. When I saw it at a quilt show recently, I decided it was next in line. The quilting on this one pushed me over the edge.

So, I got to work tracing out the first block, which is the one in the upper left corner. It's hard to see, but the design is there.

This is stitched all in black, but I'm going to use orange on any pumpkins I see. Sadly, my Pigma Micron black pen is nearly out of ink, and so I went straight to Amazon and ordered some more. There are many more blocks to trace out with that pen, and yesterday's block was quite a chore making sure everything was showing up. I hope I'm able to see it as I stitch along. In any case, it's hooped up and ready to go.

That took quite a while, but then I was ready to get going finishing the To the Rescue top. When I left it, Section F was laid out on my work table, but not yet sewn together. That took just a few minutes.

Then I had just one more section to complete.

It was time to fuse and stitch the last of the firetrucks. The dog needed his French knot eye and nose too.

When that was finished, it was time to piece together Section E.

Mike was on his way home when I started piecing all of the sections together, and I took the last stitches just as he came through the door.

All that's left now are the three borders, and the top will be finished.

As glad as I am to be finishing up this top, I'm looking on my next sewing task with great trepidation. I have four quilts to sandwich. It'll be nice to have all those projects ready for quilting, but sandwiching quilts is my least favorite part of quilting. If I could pay someone just to sandwich my quilts, I would gladly do it.

In addition to sewing the borders on, I need to pick up my next CSA share today. Most of last week's share has been used. I'm hoping for some different vegetables in this week's share. The last several shares have contained more bitter lettuces than we are prepared to eat. I've been mixing them with our own red leaf lettuce from the greenhouse, but most of that has been harvested. It's time to start some more. It's been so hot I'm going to bring the planter box into the house and start it inside. I'm afraid those tender little seedlings will fry in our hot greenhouse. Even with the window and door open, it's been frightfully hot inside.

That's my agenda for the day. What's on your list of Tuesday to-do's?