Bee Finished!

Three lengths of thread were all that I needed to finish off the binding on the Bee Loving quilt.

As I mentioned once before on this blog, I named it "Bee Loving" because it reminds me of the many happy hours I spent helping my dad with his beekeeping hobby when I was a little girl. On one of his deployments to Vietnam, he gave me instructions for adding the "super" to the top of the hive. The "super" is placed on top of the hive with a divider in between that allows the worker bees to pass through, but not the queen. This prevents the queen from laying eggs in the honeycomb, and the honey that collects in the super is what the beekeeper and his family get to enjoy.

At age 16, I'd been tending bees with him for many years, and I'd lost any sensible fear of bee stings. I went out and tended the hives barefoot and wearing only shorts. When the super ended up being heavier than expected, it slipped from my hands and fell a short distance onto the top of the hive with a big thump. As you might imagine, the bees came barreling out of the hive as I ran off, and I was stung three times on the back of my thigh. Ouch. (Interestingly, those spots tanned darker than the other areas of my legs that year. My dad thought there might be a product idea for tanning lotions in that bit of knowledge.) Having learned my lesson, I donned proper beekeeping attire and finished tending the hives more sensibly dressed for the task. My dad was impressed that I was willing to go back and finish the job after that.

So, here's how the back of the quilt looks.

Smitty tried to get Sadie to help him inspect it, but she declined, saying she'd already purrnounced it fit for snuggling. Smitty continues to be disgusted by her laziness.

Let a purrfessional handle this.

After tip-toeing around on it with his dirty feet, he too purrnounced it:

Kitty tested and appurroved.

Now the quilt has been washed and taken up residence in our fifth wheel. It's going to be a napping and snuggle quilt. It will replace a bulky comforter that we've carried along for years. With space at a premium, it'll be good to get the comforter out of there and replace it with something that takes up less space.

From there, I caught up on the two Monday Minis that needed to be done.

Here are all the minis I've made so far. I know those 36-patches are going to give me trouble when this is all sewn together. I'll figure out something. It seems we should be coming to the end of this one pretty soon. I'm hoping I can get it sewn together before we leave on our trip, but the blocks are small enough I can probably take it along, if need be.

This was all done under the watchful eye of Himself.

There was still about an hour left in the sewing day, and so I prepped all the remaining blocks for the Wine Country embroidery project. These are all iron on transfers, and they are backed with Pellon SF-101 Shape Flex. The fabric was cut. I just needed to put a hot iron to them.

The only other thing I want to do for my take-along projects is to cut the background fabric for the Snow Globes project.

When I visited the Cotton Patch the other day, I was unsuccessful in finding what I was looking for. Maybe a trip to my favorite shop in McMinnville is in order. It could count as part of my sewing day, right? Fabric acquisition is part of the process, right? And we're having leftovers for dinner, so...hmmmmm.

Also, I said way back on July 22nd that I was going to make the next Chicken Buffet block, Hawaiian Chicken. 

Things got in the way...I blame the carrots...and it's still not done. That's definitely next, and this time...nothing will stop me...except possibly fabric acquisition.