Threads of Hope

It's finished! With time to spare, my quilt for Challenge #1 of Project Quilting's 10th season is finished. The challenge theme was "Hope Springs Eternal," and here is my finished quilt. I had to work fast since inspiration only struck less than 48 hours ago. It finished up at 16 x 21 inches.

This morning I'll be linking up this little finish at:

But before I tell you about the finishing process, let's just back up to yesterday morning. Sue and I had a breezy but dry walk at the bottom of our hill. We were there well after sunrise, but the sky would say otherwise. It was very dramatic.

Our walk is about five miles long with a section that climbs 38 floors (according to my Fitbit) to the top of a hill where we have stunning views of the mountains. Yesterday, we could see Mt. Hood.

Mt. St. Helens looked as if it had a spotlight shining on it. We could also see Mt. Rainier, but it was too dim to photograph.

Also, these cows.

Sue, with her sharp eyes, spotted this quilt block. As we come up the hill, the quilt block is behind us, and neither of us has ever noticed it before.

Is it surprising that a house with metal chicken sculptures in its yard would also have a quilt block on its barn?

When I got home, it was time to get to work making a back for my little quilt. I found something perfect in my drawer of fat quarters. Check out those words in the center.

There was a little bit of red left from the fat quarter I cut for the side borders, and so I sewed them together for the quilt back.

Then I got to work quilting it. I wanted a tight stipple around the thread-painted swallow. It would hide a multitude of sins committed in the thread painting. I hoped it would show the swallow from the quilt back, and it does.

Then I switched to gray thread. With no time to spare, I didn't try to get very fancy with the quilting. The swallows on the fabric were outlined.

And that appears on the back as well.

And then, a rather uninspired bit of quilting in the border. Time is of the essence here, and so there wasn't a lot of room for anything very fancy.

And then it was finished, except for the binding.

Toward the end of the day, there was time left to machine sew the binding to the front. I used a scrap of leftover binding from two other projects.

Then, this morning I finished her off.

This would not have been possible without the help of my dedicated quilt binder cat.

So the only other thing going on around the Three Cats Ranch is multiple surprises showing up in the mail. My friend, Doris, sent me this little handmade pouch. Check that out! I can think of all kinds of uses for that. And the little sticky note pad reminded her of me and my grocery shopping lists. What a hoot! Thank you, Doris. What a sweetheart you are!

And then in yesterday's mail, my friend Sharon Vrooman sent me the 2019 calendar published by the Schoharie County Quilt Barn Trail. She sent me a calendar a couple of years ago too. These are so much fun to flip through.

Also, she sent me this panel. I had to look twice because I salivated over this panel when we visited a quilt shop in Fallbrook, California.

So, what a surprise, Sharon! Thank you so much!

Finally...no surprise here, because I ordered it myself. Someone enticed me on a Facebook post with this book. I went straight to Amazon and ordered it.

I've been wanting to make more quilts from my own photography. The only thing holding me back are my four oldest UFO's, and I'm bearing down on finished flimsies for all of them. I haven't had any time to browse through the book yet. Maybe I'm even a little afraid I'll shove everything else off the sewing room table again if I look too closely. You know how desperate times become when inspiration strikes.

So...I managed to avoid doing any housework all week long. Today, I really must catch up. Matthew is joining us for dinner tonight. He was going to come do some work on his car. The car business was postponed, but dinner is still on. I'm not sure if I'll have time for sewing today, but I'm still ready to get at the quilting for the Lucky Charm quilt. That's next, if I can get caught up on housework. Sewing before housework can only carry the day for so long.