A One-Day Streak

One day down in the New Year, and I've finished a quilt top. At this rate, I'll finish 365 quilts this year! (As if.) So, yeah...outer border on, and this top is finished. My human quilt rack's wing span isn't quite wide enough to get a good picture, but you get the idea.

Of course, I owe this finished to my excellent sewing helpers. Miss Sadie would like to wish you a very Happy New Year.

Mr. Smitty stayed up too late partying on New Year's Eve.

Once I had the top done, I took some time to remake this block from last year's Solstice Challenge. If you'll recall, my blocks all commemorated some event during the week they were released. This was the block for week 5, which happened to fall over the Martin Luther King holiday. My block honored him. Block #5 was called Gramma Anna's Basket.

I knew a while ago that I was going to have to take this block apart and remake it. When I made it originally, I neglected to trim the half square triangles before sewing the whole thing together. (Duh.) As you might guess, things didn't work at all. It had a lot of pleats and tucks and ruffles and I don't know what else, but it was kind of a mess. It was only later I realized why it had been such a bugger going together. It was tempting to leave it, but I knew it was going to cause me no end of grief down the road. It's looking much better now.

So at the time I was kind of in this "damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead-mode." Do you ever get like that? This block will be finished or else! And so I spent about an hour of my sewing day yesterday taking it all apart, trimming the triangles, and then sewing it back together. Wow...it's amazing what a little accuracy can accomplish.

And all of that to say that when I get another sewing day, I'm going to start sewing the Solstice Challenge quilt together. I'm still working out the details in my head. Pat Sloan (it was her challenge) gave us a pattern for sewing the blocks together. I'm still a little undecided about what fabrics I'm going to use.

Okay, so that wasn't the only thing I did yesterday. We had our traditional Eggs Benedict for breakfast. I mentioned in yesterday's post that I was using one of the little envelopes for the Hollandaise, rather than making it from scratch like I usually do. Well, it wasn't half bad. It lacked the tang of the made-from-scratch method, but it was good enough for RV cooking. We enjoyed it.

Also, I'm off to a good start on the second block for Heart and Home. When I reached this point, I moved my hoop, and now I'm ready to start again.

Today we're moving on from Pine Island. Our next stop is Little Manatee River State Park on the north side of Tampa (I think). There are a couple of things we want to see in Tampa...the Florida Aquarium, for one thing. We visited that aquarium some 20 years ago with the kids, and it was one of the best aquariums we'd ever visited. We're looking forward to seeing it again. There's also a manatee viewing center (TECO) asssociated with the Tampa Electric Co-op. We're hoping for a better view of them from there.

As always, I'm never certain what our internet situation will be when we move on to a state park. There's rarely wi-fi in the park, and so we're dependent on a good cell signal if we're to have internet access. If you don't hear from me, I'll be back in a few.