Welcome Day of Sewing

We've been so busy outfitting the new camper that there's been precious little time for sewing. It was good to get back in the sewing room yesterday for nearly the whole day. At the top of my agenda was to get started on a wallhanging...also for the camper. Like I said, we're all camper, all the time right now. How else are we going to get that thing on the road?

First, I made the background and then added the letters. My plan was to use plain black for the letters, but then I found a black and white polka dot at Ye Olde Fabric Stash Shoppe. You know I loves me my polka dots, and so I used that instead.

After that, it was pretty quick to trace out the rest of the applique and stick that down too.

Oh, but wait. If you know me, then you know I left out something of vital impurrtance.

Of course, there must be cats! Camping and cats...they just go together. And such awesome alliteration coupled with such astonishing assonance! (Did I get you with that one?) So, anyway, I'm still fussy cutting cats from the same piece of fabric. There was a Smitty-like cat, but no torties. No problem. Take one orange cat and dab at it with a black Sharpie, and there you have it. I'm guessing that's how Mother Nature makes them too.

It was an early morning. I woke up at 4:00 a.m. with the newest Project Quilting theme on my mind. This week's theme is "The Brighter the Better." I'm not at all sure I can get this finished in the requisite one-week timeframe, but I'm going to give it the old college try.

Okay, so I'm on my language nerd thing again. Did you ever wonder about what "the old college try" actually means?  Here's what my friend Google told me.

The answer above was edited to add this part. It seems to be a term that originated with baseball.

For my own effort with limited chance of success, I'm going to try something that begins with this template.

I found the template in this book:

And there it is right there on the book cover. You know I've made stained glass quilts before...several, in fact. This first one is called Spring Fever.

This one is called A World Apart.

This one was made for a previous Project Quilting challenge. It's called Sunrise, Sunset.

The technique described in the Art Glass book is different from what I'm accustomed to, and so the template wasn't suitable as it appeared in the book. I needed to enlarge it and then tape it together to create what I needed. That's what I was doing early this morning, and I'm hoping to get a start on that today. Time's a wastin.

Also this morning, I started the embroidery for the Road Trip block. I said I'd get back to you about how the embroidery through Mistyfuse applique went, and I'm happy to say that it is an improvement over Heat 'n Bond. 

I started there with the license plate, which is actually four layers. There are two layers of applique, one layer of background, and one layer of stabilizer. Even with all of that, it was fairly easy to stitch. That little spot includes backstitch, French knots, and satin stitch, so I gave it a good workout.

Aside from the stained glass quilt, my agenda today includes getting the tomato seeds started. The weather has warmed up enough that Mike could turn on the water in the greenhouse. It's not warm, however, and so I'm hoping to spend as little time as possible outside. It's a messy job and I've done it in the laundry room before. I know there will be a lot less cursing if I do it at my potting bench. And all of that in between loads of laundry. Yep, there's never a dull moment here at the Three Cats Ranch. If potting tomato seeds doesn't thrill you, surely loads of laundry will.