11/2/16

Nifty November Day

It was a day of many miles and several projects yesterday. In my usual fashion, I started off the morning with some embroidery. Recall that I was disparaging my consistency with satin stitching a few days ago. Now I've done both the bat and the crow, and these aren't too bad. The bat's wings are especially tricky because they are so narrow at the extreme right and left.


Now I've moved the hoop again, and I'll continue making my way to the bottom. Matthew and I were scheduled for a late breakfast, but I still had some time to do the next section of free motion quilting on the Flower Sampler I'm doing with Lori Kennedy. These are what she calls "linear fills," the idea being that if we stitched very close to the flower petals, it would cause them to stand out. Here's my straight line fill:


We had the option of dividing the space in half and making the lines half as long. There wasn't so much space on my sampler, and so I opted to fill the whole space without dividing it. For the other fill, I decided to do the loop design.


Here's how the whole piece is looking now. I kind of wish I'd kept the bottom fill heading straight up and down instead of diagonal, but I imagine it won't matter when the rest of the piece is filled in.


After that, I met up with Matthew for breakfast, which was delightful. It was supposed to be a rainy day, but as we sat eating breakfast, the clouds cleared off and the sun began to shine. We took a little walk around the community of Multnomah Village, stopping off at a bakery for some goodies.

When I got home, I had some time to finish top-stitching and embellishing the latest block for It's Raining Cats and Dogs. This one is finished now. I used hot fix nailheads for the eyes on the critters, and the three dogs across the top have some doodads on their collars.


After that, it was time to pick up our CSA share. There are two more weeks of pick-ups left, and I'll admit that I'm ready to be finished with this. Our farmers also do a winter share of shorter duration. I was mightily tempted to sign up back in July. Now, I'm kind of glad for the break. The veggies are wonderful, but it's always a challenge and a race to use them up each week. I'll point out that having too much food is a First World problem, and hardly something to whine about. When April rolls around again, I'll have forgotten about the challenge, and I'll be chomping at the bit for those fresh organic veggies again. For now, I've got different varieties of radishes and turnips piling up in the crisper. Today I might spend some time quick pickling them.

Also today, I'm going to get to work on the last WIP from October's goals, the Hobo Quilt. I keep calling it the Hobo Quilt, but it's actual name is "Mulligan Stew". I'll probably give it a different name at some point. I've been doing a row at a time. I last worked on this back in May when I did this row:


There are 60 blocks in all, and I'll be working on blocks 26-30 today. They are small, and so they go fairly quickly. You can read about the inspiration for this quilt (including links within links) right here.

And with that, I'll get to it.

9 comments:

Vroomans' Quilts said...

I know you keep a white board for your projects and where they left at, but I couldn't work this way. I would dive head first into the Hobo Quilt - a few blocks at a time (so far apart) would drive me nuts.

Barb H said...

"Doo Dads." I love it!

Summer said...

Your patterns are charming ♠

Pam said...

Your sunflower is looking good! i am doing this sampler also except I have had to wait while my Juki went on vacation to San Diego (some people have all the luck)!

claudia said...

Your crow and bat look great! I really like how the sunflower is coming along. When I saw the picture the first thing that came to mind was stunning!
My day was pulling boxes of ornaments off the shelf in my closet and pulling my daughter's ornaments out. When we moved up here, she was staying behind and wasn't quite sure when she would settle into one home for a while. She was afraid they would get broken, so sent them 900 miles away with me! Now I am in charge of packing them up carefully and shipping them back down the 900 miles to her! Then this afternoon we took a tool box out of my truck, put it in the room mates truck and we went and picked up 24 bales of hay. In a couple of days we get to go get more. And then a few days after that even more so. I don't know if this is good for us two oldsters! (I didn't plan soon enough, now I'm scrambling for food for my critters!) I'm either going to adopt a young person to help out or get a hired hand to help!

quiltzyx said...

That satin stitching looks mighty fine to me!
I think the sunflower sampler will be cool when it's done. How big is it? Could you make a pillow cover with it?
Well, I am off to work on & hopefully finish the guild newsletter. I think I will put in a blurb asking if someone else would like to do it. I've done it for YEARS now. Time for me to step down.

Dana Gaffney said...

Your FMQ looks great and I don't think the direction will matter once it's done, it may even add a little to it. I'm loving the colors in the Dogs and Cats, so soft and pretty.

Brown Family said...

I always get my satin stitch too close together which ,makes it thick and bulky.I wish I could get into doing multiple projects at a time. I get stuck in the mind set that I have to finish it before I start something else!

Kate said...

I like how both filler patterns make the sunflower stand out. You are making pretty good progress on both your old and new projects.