A Day for Stitching both Fast and Slow

While I hadn't intended to spend the entire day sewing yesterday, I did anyway. Shoot. Missed getting my housework done a-GAIN! The first order of the day was to stitch the second inchy for the National Embroidery Month stitch-along. I realized that I'd colored the yellow flower center with the pink pencil, and so I satin-stitched over that. You won't tell, will you?

And then I got to work on the remainder of the Appalachian Memories quilt block. When I finished up for the day, only this little bit was left to stitch. It was tempting to keep going, but I was getting tired of it by that time.

After that, I got to work top-stitching Cricket's pawtrait. I top stitched around the edges of the fused pieces and then stitched in some iris lines for the eyes.

When I turned around, I found these two little waifs wishing, wishing, wishing someone would open the doors to their clubhouse. Smitty uses the eyes-burning-into-the-object-of-my-desire approach. Sadie prefers the blank-eyed stare.

It was raining outside, and so I opened the doors for them. And by then, I was ready to get to work doing the thread-painting and stitching in details on Cricket. For this, I'm just kind of free-hand zig-zagging around the edges of things and adding shading where it looks as if it needs it. Cats are fuzzy, and so none of their edges should be too well-defined.

When that was finished, I added a French knot at each eye for the eye spot. Adding that bit of "glimmer" brings the eyes to life.

And then it was time to add the back and do the quilting. Digging through my bin of cat fabrics, I came out with this Laurel Burch fabric I've had forEVER. It seemed like a good time to use it.

By that time, Smitty had come down from the clubhouse and did his part scrap napping.

For quilting, I did a meandering loop-de-loop-de-pointe filler on the blue background. (Technical quilting terms...try to keep up.)

In the border I did a right and left hook swoop-de-doo sort of thing.

And then, I sewed on the binding.

Now, it's waiting for me to finish up the hand-stitching and Cricket will be done. I really didn't think I'd get that far with it when I started yesterday, but there you go...all in a day's work. And by "a day's work," I mean the whole day.

Just before turning off the lights for the day, I pulled some fabrics for the next block of the Garden Sunshine BOM. Here's the picture from the block instructions:

When I saw those fabrics, I knew I had just the right ones in my stash, and so I dug around and pulled out these three. The red one was purchased when we were visiting Niagara Falls last year. It isn't the kind of thing I'd purchase ordinarily, but it was so cute, I could resist. And when I saw the fabrics in the image above, my mind went to it immediately. I've been waiting for just the right time to use it, and here it is.

Speaking of traveling, you might remember when we visited an antique/fabric shop while we were touring North Carolina's Outer Banks region last year. I saw this little doll bed on sale, and then marked down. I so dearly wanted it, but sanity prevailed.

We were only in about the middle of our trip with limited space in the RV, and I simply couldn't entertain the idea of dragging it around with us when we still had so many miles to travel. Still, I didn't forget about it, and it wasn't the first time I'd thought about getting one to use for displaying doll quilts.

Recently, I got a bee in my bonnet and started perusing websites and Etsy shops until I found this one. It was delivered yesterday.

The Etsy shop where I got it is located right here. I was drawn to it because, first, the price was right. But also, because of the description, to-wit:

"Originally I made a bed like that for my granddaughter's birthday - and she loved it so much and told all her cousins, so I had do make 4 more for my other granddaughters ( age 2 years-6 years). They are saying that dolls love to sleep in the bed, and I trust them ;-)

I use cedar wood from my backyard, carefully prepare and cover with non-toxic lacquer."

The story related to his granddaughters was endearing, but I liked the idea that the cedar came from the woodworker's own backyard, and that each one was different.

This morning, I folded up some doll quilts to make a nice soft bed, and then I put my two fabric dollies in the bed so they could test it out. No complaints from them so far. The little dolls were made by my dear friend Sharon V. and me. Sharon made the one on the right. I made the one on the left from Sharon's tutorial.

So there. Now I'll have even more company in the sewing room.

This morning I stitched up the third inchy. These are so much fun.

And then I finished off Block #3 of 12 for the Appalachian Memories quilt.

This being Sunday, I'll be linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching.

The weatherman seems quite excited with our weather forecast. They're insisting that snow will fall overnight, and we could have up to three inches of accumulation even down to the valley floor. At our elevation of 1,700 feet, we could see even more. With that in mind, I have plenty of food on hand, but I'm nearly out of bread. It seems like a good idea to make a quick trip into town to get a loaf of bread. Might be a good idea to get some coffee too. You wouldn't want to run out of that. We could die up here without coffee. So there's that. Also...there's the housework I haven't done for the past week. I thought the elves might take care of it, but no. Probably I need to hire some different elves.

If I get through all that, I'll get to work making some blocks. There's the block for the Garden Sunshine BOM above, and I'd like to get going on my Rainbow Scrap blocks. Also, I still need to sew the binding and rickrack on the Emerald Isle table runner. With the barn block finished, I need to trace out the next block for the Snow Globes quilt. There's plenty of hand work to keep me busy for a couple of days, and so that might have to wait until tomorrow. Oh yes, and the next challenge for Project Quilting will be announced today.

Plainly, there is plenty to do around here, and so I guess I'll get to it.