Projects Aplenty

The last project update was from Tuesday since the Pets on Quilts show took up blog time for the past couple of days. There's plenty to show you, so I'll just get to it. First up, quilting the Bee Lovely quilt is ongoing. Some other stuff took up the day yesterday, and so here's where it stood as of Wednesday afternoon.

When I left off, I was stitching around the embroidered tractor in the "Bee Industrious" block.

For this quilt, I'm outlining around the embroidery motif just enough to make its identity clear from the quilt back, and to give it a little poofiness on the front. These are technical quilting terms, so try to keep up. It's probably difficult to see in this next image, but I outlined around the whole tractor, its tires, the steering wheel and the grill.

And then I continued on, stitching a bee, heart, and flight path in each block, then stitching around the embroidery as much as made sense. The block below is "Bee Kind."

This next one is "Bee Good."

And this one is "Bee Courageous."

Speaking of courage, here's my little cat pondering his work for the day:

His is a seek-and-destroy mission among hip-high weeds, searching out any lurking squirrels, mice, moles, gophers, voles...actually, he's not picky.

Constance is finished now.

When I work on the bag ladies again, I'll be stitching Mathilda. As always, if you're stitching along with us, you should choose whichever bag lady you like. As for Matilda...I believe she's still in her pajamas.

This morning I got back to work stitching the last of the Summer Holiday blocks. The tree is the most time-consuming part of this one, but it's close to being completely stitched now.

Yesterday seemed like a good time to trace out the last of the Hocuspocusville blocks, and so I dragged out all the fabrics, pens, backing, and lightbox for that.

As long as I had it all out, I decided it was a good time to trace out the largest block for the Sundress project. I'll be starting that one while we're on the road this fall.

The center block is the largest, and so I wanted to trace it before we left. I could do it on the road, but I prefer to give myself some elbow room for this one. Now it's ready to go. Also, I cut all the backgrounds and backings for the remaining blocks. They still need to be traced, and I'll do that as I come to them.

There was a wait for the background fabrics for these new projects, but I have them now. And since I was in a cutting mood, I decided to cut the backgrounds and backings for Home and Heart

and for Friendship's Garden.

Now, all three of these projects are kitted up with fabrics, backings, floss, and marking pens to be used for tracing. The only other one I'm taking along is the Snow Globes project.

I need background fabric for this one too. I'm in search of a cream background with white dots. There were a few online, but I really need to see it in person to be sure I'm getting what I want. With that in mind, we're combining errands today. We need to drive my quilts for the Oregon State Fair down to Salem today. Afterward, we'll visit the Cotton Patch in Keizer, Oregon. Hopefully, they'll have something I like. There are a few paperwork errands to run too. It's going to be a busy day here, so it's doubtful I'll have time for sewing. The weekend looks clear though...and I'm going to do laundry in my new machine this weekend. Fasten your seat belts for a full report. It'll be fascinating, I'm sure.