Slow Stitching on a Slow Day

It was a dark and stormy day here in New Orleans...really dark. There was even thunder and lightening. Some of the thunder claps sounded like gunfire. I thought I might do some sewing, but with the weather so bad, it meant Mike and I were both inside. It makes for cramped quarters when I have all my sewing crap strewn all over every available surface.

Instead, I worked on slow stitching most of the day. I finished up the 2nd of 12 dresses for the Sundress quilt.

There was supposed to be another of those dratted cast-on flower stitch flowers at the left shoulder. There were written instructions included with the pattern. Try as I might, I cannot figure it out. I've read several different variations of written instructions. I even picked up a book in a quilt shop the other day and read about it there. Someone actually tried to show me in person at a guild meeting many years ago. It was so frustrating that I actually threw down the hoop in disgust and refused to continue trying. I've watched countless You-Tube videos, and it seems I have a mental block against this. It's like when I had to take three required statistics courses in college. Some things simply won't penetrate my thick skull.

As for statistics, it was the one college class (multiplied by three) that completely bamboozled me. I got through statistics by purchasing a workbook and learning it by rote. I studied figures of equations and learned to slide the numbers around to get an answer without having even an inkling of understanding of the theory. When I went to graduate school, my research course textbook requirement included a book entitled, "Statistics Without Tears." Just now I went to Amazon to see if the title still exists. It does.

The title made me feel just a little less at odds with statistics. Apparently, I'm not the only one bamboozled by the subject.

So all of that to say that when I couldn't figure out that stitch for the second time in a single quilt, I decided to just do something different there. Mine is a lazy daisy flower, and there is a short stitch in the center of each "petal." It'll serve as a monument to my embroidery ineptitude every time I look at it, but I'll be doing my embroidery without tears, and that's gotta count for something.

With that one done, I was ready to move on to block 10 for the Wine Country quilt. This one is starting to feel like a finish in the offing. Here's the block I'm working on now.

It doesn't give a clue whether I'm stitching red or white wine here, but my floss colors work better if I assume it's a red wine. The afternoon was passed with nothing but stitching, and I moved the piece far enough along to move my hoop.

There's a part of me that is OCD, and I'm bothered when a tiny portion of the design is outside the reach of my needle.

When I moved the hoop, I couldn't quite fit the grape leaf into the hoop. It's right at the edge there, and the bottom hoop will block my ability to stitch it.

So I stitched a little more at the bottom of the piece, and then moved the hoop again.

That took care of it. Grape leaves...you cannot escape my needle of doom!

Okay, so it was a boring day, and this post is one of the "prattle" variety. I'll fill a post with words if it kills me...think of it as blogging without tears.

Today we're moving on to Palmetto Island State Park in Louisiana. We decided to stop there because our next consequential stop will be the Texas Quilt Museum in La Grange, Texas. The museum is only open Thursday through Sunday, and so we needed to kill a little time before we arrive there. Looking at the map, we noticed the state park, and hey...we're game for anything. More about that later.