Sewing Cat

Sadie seems to be finding her place here at the Three Cats Ranch, and I believe she's staked out the sewing room. Sometimes hours pass without our seeing her. When we seek her out, she's usually lounging on my sewing table. This morning I was in there for an hour or so, and she was here, there and everywhere. She seems to like it, and it makes me think I might have found myself an excellent sewing cat. Perhaps that's why we bonded so quickly at the shelter.

She's a cat who likes living on the edge.

But she's very sensible about it as well.

Catnip? No thanks. Never touch the stuff. That'll rot your brain.

Being a sewing cat and a companion to the humans at the Three Cats Ranch is only a small part of her role. Her most important job is being a companion to Himself, and at that, she's doing very well. He seems to have accepted her completely. They're bumping noses at every greeting now, and also playing together. When he heard the goings on in the sewing room, he had to get in on the action.

So what was I doing in the sewing room? Well, thanks for asking! I was finishing up Block 2 of the Bee-utiful Quilt-A-Long. Here's the designer's take on this block.

Here's what I did with it. 

The designer used wool for her hexies. I don't have any wool, nor do I want to buy any, and so I used scraps for that. My quilt is going to be made with fabrics from my stash, and so I created a bin for it today. I'll toss in whatever scraps I use while making the blocks, and then use them when I sew it together later. 

Also, the designer suggested three strands of floss for the embroidery instead of the usual two strands. I like the look, and to my eye, it gives the piece a more primitive appearance. My plan was always to use my machine's blanket stitch. The stitch I usually use is #1329 (on my Bernina 750QE). For this project, I decided to use the heavier stitch #1330, which is a little wider and longer, but it also takes each stitch twice. For this piece, I like the way it blends in with the heavier hand stitching.

Since I'm trying to keep up with the quilt-along, I readied Block #3 before heading upstairs. Here's the designer's take on it.

When I stitch this out, I'll probably use a stem stitch for the tulip. I don't like that chain stitch she's used, and I'm going to use a variegated pink floss for the circle flower. She used several colors of yellow/gold for her sunflower, and I'm going to use a variegated gold for that. In addition to using fabric scraps, I'm trying to use up some of my leftover floss.

I'll get started on that tomorrow, and I expect it will take at least a couple of days to finish it.

I didn't make any more progress on Live, Love, Teach yesterday. After getting home from my walk with Sue, I wrote a blog post. My next agenda item was to get back to sewing when I found myself yawning and yawning and yawning. What else could I do but take a nap? There was only about an hour left in the day before I needed to make an appetizer for a neighborhood get-together, and so I bagged sewing for the day.

For my appetizer, I made these Tuscan Mushrooms. They're pretty easy, and they're great for a potluck since they can be served either warm or at room temperature.

As it happens, turnout was light for the neighborhood get-together and only the neighbors who'd lived on the hill longest turned out. We used to do these gatherings several times a year, but now, several years have passed with none. In the meantime, lots of new neighbors have moved in, and it seems folks are less interested. For us, it was nice to get together with neighbors we hadn't seen in a while except while passing on the road and picking up mail.

As I'm writing this, Mike is hard at work on the catio. That makes Smitty happy because he can be outside as long as Mike is out there sawing and hammering. My only agenda item for the day is to get back to work on Live, Love, Teach. I'm pretty sure I can finish the quilting today. If I'm really industrious, I might get the binding sewn on as well.