Here Comes the Sun

We're above the clouds here at the Three Cats Ranch this morning. That doesn't mean the sun is shining however. It might be more accurate to say we're between the clouds. We have a little more light than those folks in the valley, but it's still quite overcast.

Also, you'll notice we can't see Mt. St. Helens today. Oh well. It beats the heavy rain we had on Thanksgiving day. It looks to be a dry day, and so I'll probably get out for a walk fairly soon.

Yesterday, I decided to follow the lead of the cornucopia of slugs and sat around slug-like myself. In the last hour of the day before it was time to heat up leftovers for dinner, I finished quilting the Sunflower Sampler. In each corner, we were to put a flower. Lori Kennedy made her flowers more daisy-like in appearance. I decided to emphasize the "sun" in "sunflower". These are about two inches across, which accounts for the blur. I made a tiny section of the picture large.

Then she used a sort of stylized feather she had earlier called "doodle leaves". I started at the bottom left of the collage below. I was having a hard time getting them very even. After getting around to about the third side, they were looking a little better.

If you consider I was emphasizing the "sun" in "sunflower", the borders might illustrate that I was emphasizing the "free" in "free motion quilting". It's a sampler. Practice. It's good enough. And now it's finished.

Then I sewed on the binding by machine. You might remember this fabric from the Seating for Two quilt.

I used itty bitty strips of it for the spaces between the slats on the red chair.

Isn't it fun to see the many ways to use the same fabric? When I paused to write this blog post, I'd hand-stitched one full side plus a little of the second side and turned two corners.

My cat is here to verify.

The finished quilt is 20 x 20 inches, and so it won't take me long to get all the way around.

In other hand-stitching, I filled the hoop on my hand quilting project, and then moved it to the next location.

Here, I'm emphasizing the "slow" in "slow stitching".

Sewing is all about perspective, isn't it? And now I'll get back to my binding.