Stitching of All Kinds

We made an unexpected trip into town yesterday. Mike decided he needed to have the fluids in one of the radiators exchanged. Since he needed to leave the car, I needed to follow him into town and drive him back home. As long as we were in town, we ran a few errands. And then, of course, we had to go back to town to retrieve the car when it was all done. Oh well. There was still plenty of time to sew.

Before we left, I stitched up what remained in the hoop for Friendship's Garden.

It's about 3/4 finished now, and I've moved the hoop to the extreme left. It doesn't quite fit into the hoop for the finish, but it's very close.

From there I got ready to go into town. When I came back downstairs...uh-oh. This is never a good sign.

They'd brought in a little shrew. And let me tell you...those things are lightning fast. On the other side of the china cabinet, Smitty was lying in wait.

We haven't seen it since, and so we assume the kitties disposed of it while we were gone. There is no evidence of any kind to be seen anywhere, and the kitties have gone back to their usual business of bothering the quilter.

When I was able to get back to the quilt, I finished off the house and small tree section and added some clouds. I still need to add some clouds in the upper left, but I'll get at those when I get back across to that side.

From there, I moved back to the right side of the quilt above the daisies from the day before and started working on the large dogwood tree and blossoms.

By the time I'd had enough, the whole of the right side was quilted.

Now I've rotated the quilt so the bulk of it is rolled up on the table under the machine, and I'll be stitching upside down across the top. Since I'm just top-stitching it really makes no difference which way I go. This way, the bulk of the quilt isn't dragging across my lap, pulling off applique pieces as I go. If any fall off now, they'll be captured in the folds of the quilt. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything stays put.

I was kind of tired of working on it, and so I went down to the basement sewing room and started top-stitching the November Tuxedo's Tales block. It's a lot more trouble to do it on Pfelicity, but we kept after it until I had it this far. I've machine embroidered the stems of the wheat stalks, and I've marked where I'll make some lazy daisy stitches by hand to finish off their tops. I stitched a little up in the right hand corner where the leaves and stems are there, but didn't take a picture when I quit for the day.

Today will be pretty much a repeat of what I did yesterday. I'm hoping to finish the Tuxedo block today. Probably I won't get Wind in the Whiskers finished today, but I'll get pretty close. It looks like November's OMG will get finished this month.

So that's where it stands here at the Three Cats Ranch. We're expecting another sunny and cold day, but we're expecting the rain to return by tomorrow.