A Little More Productive

After my sluggish day on Sunday, I vowed to be more productive on Monday. With just a slight improvement, I think I can call the day a success. While I was writing my post yesterday morning, I had bread rising in the kitchen. It baked up into another beautiful loaf.

It really makes a wonderful sandwich bread. And if you're not a white bread kind of person, but prefer whole wheat, it can easily be adjusted to make a whole wheat loaf. You can find the recipe for this right here.

Once I had the bread out of its pan and cooling, I took off for my local quilt shop. I've been waiting for the day to come when I could use my 25% off coupon. I needed a quilt back for the Solstice to Solstice quilt, and I found something I liked there. Before I show you my purchases, however, I wanted to show you this beautiful sky fabric I purchased from Vicki Welch whose shop is at Colorways by Vicki Welch. When I saw this on Vicki's Instagram feed, I thought I was looking at a photo of the actual sky. Well. Don't you know I needed me some of that.

The folds kind of give it away as actual fabric and not the actual sky, but you can see how pretty that gradient is. It's hard to find good sky fabrics, and so I'm happy to have found this. Thank you, Vicki, for that quick turnaround too.

As for the fabrics I purchased yesterday, I found this one for the Solstice to Solstice quilt. Do you ever have a fabric just grab you the moment you see it? I needed quite a bit of this because my quilt is large.

It appealed to me because of its messages: "Focus on the Good," and "Gather Happy Moments," and "Create A Bee-u-tiful Life," and "Find Joy in Simple Things." You might recall that each block in the Solstice to Solstice quilt commemorates something that happened the week it was released and made,

and so these messages from the fabric seemed perfect for my quilt back.

Also, I was on the hunt for a burgundy/red fabric to frame the remaining six blocks for the Wine Country quilt. I think this one will do nicely.

That'll be next on my agenda. I'd still like to get that quilt sewn together, and so I'll work on that some today.

While I was out, I stopped off at Joann to pick up some sparkle tulle for the Gingerbread Village. When the whole thing is ready to go, I'll lay a single layer of tulle over it to hold the pieces in place, and then I'll stitch around each piece. It's hard to see in this image, but there is some sparkle to this white tulle.

Just for grins I laid it out partially covering the portion I have done on the village. You can see the sparkle a little better in the image below.

Finally, I finished up the stitching on the latest block for Heart & Home. This is block 6 of 9, Peace and Plenty Farm.

That one was kind of fun to do. And since I started this project while we were traveling, I hadn't yet trimmed any of the blocks. It seemed as good a time as any to trim all of them, and so I cut them down to a 9 x 9 size. Here are all the blocks I have finished.

With that finished, and this being the first of the month, it's time to sew together another row for the Shop Hop quilt. That means I needed to make a strip with the names for the next eight blocks. They're traced out now, and I'll get started on it this morning.

On today's agenda, I want to do a little more housework, but then I'll continue sewing together the Wine Country quilt. I'd like to get that one into a finished flimsy as soon as I can...not that there's any rush, but I want to see it. If I can get that finished, I'll do some more on the Gingerbread Village. We're expecting sunshine tomorrow, and so I'll be back at the weeds soon enough. Better get my sewing done while I can.

Mike is on his way home now. We still don't know whether he'll be stopping in Indiana to have repairs done to the roof, but he's headed that direction. When we spoke last night, he'd crossed into Tennessee and was planning to spend the night in Nashville.