Two Ways with Chicken

The kitties and I were up early this morning. There's quite a bit on the agenda for today, and it's doubtful I'll get it all done. Starting early will help. As for yesterday...not too much new under the sun, but I decided to move the hoop on the Appalachian Memories block. Except for some lines at the bottom, my hoop was pretty much filled up, and I wanted to get the tree on the right.

You might recall I was mulling over what stitch to use for the trees. The whole piece (pretty much) is stitched in stem stitch. The branches of the tree kind of called out for fly stitch, and so that's what I did. It looks good. The "trunk" of the tree is still stitched in stem stitch.

Okay, well call me a liar because there actually was something new under the sun. When I asked for tips about making the mini blocks for the Wonky Windowpanes, my friend Carolyn suggested this tool called a "clapper" for getting the blocks to lie flat. It's a tool used by tailors to get a nice crease. I've been spritzing them with water, which tends to distort them. Carolyn suggested a dry iron, and then 30 seconds under the clapper to tame those recalcitrant seams.

So I visited my friend Amazon.com and did some reading and shopping.

There were quite a few to choose from, but I settled on this one. I got to work making the backgrounds for the Chicken Buffet blocks.

So these large four-patches were sewn together and pressed. You can see in the image below that the seam still kind of wants to stand up. It's not a big deal on a 12-inch block, but on those teeny tiny blocks for a mini, it is kind of a problem. Okay, so this seemed like a good place to test out the clapper, and so I ironed it again (dry iron...the steam function on my iron stopped working about six months after we received it as a wedding gift in 1975).

Then I rested the clapper on top of the seam and let it set for 30 seconds. When I removed it...well, lookie there!

Cool! That just makes me want to shove everything off my sewing space and start another mini. Maybe I will a little later in the month. Thanks for that tip, Carolyn!

Instead, I stuck with the original plan and did all the fusing for two Chicken Buffet blocks. These are blocks 9 and 10 of the 12 blocks I need. The first one is "Stewed Chicken."

The second is "Chicken Soup."

I'm doing these in tandem since the top-stitching requires multiple changes of thread colors, and it makes sense to do them both at the same time. Now I have the machine set up for top-stitching. This is why I was waiting for Big Bertha to come home from the spa. I really like this foot for doing blanket stitch. The foot on Pfelicity is solid plastic, and I can see the applique through it, but not as clearly as with this open foot. Oh yes, and the knee life makes my life so much easier.

It was getting late in the day, and so I only got as far as the spoon on the Chicken Soup block. I'll get some more done on this today.

I'm hoping to get these finished today. In addition to the top-stitching, there is also some hand and machine embroidery, and so they aren't even close at this point. Also on today's agenda, I'm making and canning some Christmas Jam. I'm hopeful that won't take up too much time. Also, I'd like to get the tree decorated, but that is lowest priority for now.

So, before I sign off for the day, let's just check in on the amaryllis, shall we? Here's the picture I took 48 hours ago.

Here's how it looks this morning. It's grown about two inches...or an inch a day...amazing!

It's Sunday, and that means pancakes for breakfast. As my father used to say, my big ones are eating up my little ones, and so I'm just going to get some batter mixed up and plop those puppies on the griddle. What's on tap for your Sunday?