One Block Down

Yesterday I got a start on the Quilting Snowladies. They're dragging their feet, which makes it slow-going. Oh wait...snowladies don't have feet. Well, that explains a lot.

The metallic thread gets its turn first. I'll quilt all the snowflakes into the cornerstones, and then I'm quilting on each side of the blue block border. Here's how the first block looks.

There will still be more quilting with the "natural" thread onto the embroidered quilt block. The plan is to connect the embroidered snowflakes with some swirly stuff and also some "drifts" into the snow banks. I'll probably outline around the snowladies and any other large designs. That will be easy enough. I'm also going to stitch in the ditch around the edge of the block where the first colored border is. Then I'm going to quilt some primitive snowflakes into the rest of the sashings.

Thanks to those of you who made suggestions about my quilted corners. After writing that post yesterday, I decided to avoid the whole corner issue altogether by stitching to the edge of the border in this tic tac toe design. It's a little more interesting visually, I think, and it will save me some frustration. The slowest of the going from yesterday was trying to get the hang of those straight lines. They aren't bad, but it's still a little hard to keep the template from shifting as I go. It should get easier with practice, I think.

So the kitties are moving closer toward uniting in kittydom. Yesterday, we opened the laundry room door into Mike's office and propped it open on both sides with door stoppers. (We were making dead certain that door could not be opened any further from either side.) Smitty is intensely curious about her at this point. His whining now is about letting him inside. I honestly think he's ready to play with her. She's still grrrrring at him...and who can blame her? He's been extremely rude ever since she arrived. She's establishing her position as the true boss of the house, but she'll let him think he's the boss. She's clearly a smart woman. 

It makes sense...here's a little kitty trivia for you: Everyone knows that a male cat is called a "Tom" right? But who knows what a female cat is called? Hm? Anyone? I see some hands going up...yes. Answer: A female kitty is called a "Queen". Just sayin'.

And this is exactly what I'm talking about. He's so nosy....and that's just plain rude.

Every time she goes to the door, there he is...like some kind of stalker.

But who can blame him when she's so veiled in mystery? (Actually, I couldn't take this picture without the flash bouncing off the white walls and glaring back into the lens, but you get the idea.)

We're continuing letting them get acquainted through the crack in the door (sounds like the title of a mystery novel, doesn't it? "The Crack in the Door"). A little later on today, we'll let her out into the main part of the house and see how it goes. We want to make a little mouse on a string toy first to distract them if one or the other decides to get mouthy.

It's 22°F. and snowing this morning. I'm going to go out and fill the bird feeders in a little while, but it isn't particularly inviting just now. 

We're expecting warmer temperatures by tomorrow, and so who knows how long this will be around. I'll just enjoy it from Eliza's window while I continue quilting the snowladies. It's good quilting weather, for sure, and the subject matter is a perfect match for the day.