Wednesday of Tranquilty

My housework is caught up, and Mike will not be home for dinner. Aside from sewing, the only thing I really need to do is to make up my grocery shopping list for tomorrow. I'm going to take advantage of it because tomorrow will be busy. I'm getting my monthly pedicure (which is nice, but it still takes me away from home). Then, I'm dropping off the Vintage Miniature Sewing Machines quilt at a local quilt shop to be entered in the Northwest Quilting Expo at the end of September.

After that, I'll head off to the grocery store, and so it will be a full day. This might actually be my last trip to the grocery store before we head off to Moab a week from tomorrow. Before we leave, I'll have most of our meals for the trip prepared, including some of our breakfasts and lunches. The camper is small, but comfortable. Nevertheless, there isn't a lot of counter space, and so cooking is a little inconvenient. The more I can do ahead of time, the better.

The kitties are staying home this trip. The truck camper is too small for two adults and two cats. Besides, the cramped quarters cause us more worry about escapees, and so we just don't chance it. We have a good pet sitter coming in to take care of them. Smitty and Gracie have been getting along like old friends lately, and so they are good company for one another as well.

So with tomorrow mapped out, I have a leisurely day ahead of me with lots of hours to myself. It feels luxurious. This morning I finished the embroidery for Erik's quilt label.

Usually, I don't go to this much effort on a quilt label, but the "speeding ticket" was included with the Vintage Tin pattern. I adapted it for Erik's birthday, and it only took a couple of sittings for me to stitch it. I had extra skeins of floss left from the quilt, but just a partial skein already opened and wrapped onto a card. I was getting a little nervous toward the end because I thought I might run out of floss from that final partial skein. When I was finished, I had this much floss left.

Usually, it goes the other way. I figure the Universe felt I'd paid my dues for the month when I got that actual traffic ticket at the Oregon State Fair last week.

Since I had the right color of thread loaded onto my sewing machine, I decided to go ahead and finish this up, using the fusible interfacing method I talked about in a previous post. This label being square instead of round, I decided to try a tip I read just a few days ago...and I'm sorry, I can't recall where I read this. Instead of clipping the corner at 45° from the corner stitches, one makes two cuts, thereby reducing bulk at the corner.

This actually worked pretty well. I've also tried another method whereby one turns 45° a single stitch short of the corner, take two stitches, and then continue on 90° from the first line of stitching. I actually liked today's method better. It did reduce bulk and I was able to get sharper corners when I turned the piece inside out (or outside in, depending on your point of view). So there's my finished label.

Now I just need to sandwich, quilt, and bind the quilt, and I'll be ready to sew that puppy on. As I consider that previous sentence, it's a little like that classic Steve Martin routine where he instructs you on how you can make a million dollars and *never* pay taxes! First...you get a million dollars. Now...

So, again, I found myself with a dearth of embroidery projects. There were three stacked on my light box for tracing, and so I got to work on those. The first was Sophie's block for Lisa's quilt.

The finger-painted head isn't technically a rainbow, but that's how my eyes read it. I decided to use my rainbow print fabric. The size restrictions meant I had to choose between the blue at the top and the red below the mouth. I chose the latter, and used a rainbow-colored variegated thread to top-stitch it. Just the name requires embroidery, and then this one will be finished.

Also, I considered how to do Chelsea and Misty's block. You can see that they've included book titles on their little books. The books are only about one inch in width. It was going to be difficult to applique and then stitch those tiny book titles, even with a single strand of floss. 

In the end, I decided to embroider the whole block and to color with crayon in the sections requiring color. Also, Lisa asked me to correct the spelling of "elamentary", which I did. Here's what I came up with. It requires embroidery now.

Finally, I traced out the last block for the Vintage Kitchen wall hanging. I'll probably stitch this one first since these little blocks can be stitched in one sitting.

This is the ninth of nine blocks for the free pattern by Jenny of Elefantz.

The pattern will be free until the end of 2015, so if you like this, now is the time to get it right here. 

Yesterday, I finished up the Blushing Aspens table runner. When I started on it Tuesday morning, I had three of the row of ten small leaves completed.

It took most of the day, but I finished the remaining seven leaves and then sewed the strip to the rest of the runner.

Then I added the borders, and the top was finished. I'm going to use that same greenish-blue for the binding.

And that constitutes my project for the Let's Book It challenge. 

So that brings me to this moment in time. Today I'm going to be sandwiching quilts. The Blushing Aspens are on the list. Also, Vintage Tin,

Feed the Cat,

And the Four Fabric Forest.

If I can get all of those sandwiched, I'll start quilting the Four Fabric Forest. It's going to be shown in my guild's quilt show next month, and so I need to get it finished. After that, Vintage Tin will be my next victim.

And that ought to be enough to keep me busy this Wednesday. Time to get to it.