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It seems like it was a lazy Friday, but there's still plenty to tell you this morning. It was the first day of National Embroidery Month. Yeah...who knew? Well, I only knew because Meg Hawkey from Crabapple Hill Studios announced it with a stitch-along that started yesterday. We're stitching an "inchy" sampler. The first one was easy enough to stitch in about 15 minutes, including the time it took me to wind the skein of floss onto its floss bobbin.

Today's will be the one to the left of the first one, and I'll get to it as soon as the instructions are posted.

While I was stitching, I noticed that some of the color had bled after applying the "extender" to it.

Here's another place.

It doesn't bother me that it happened on this piece. It might even be an improvement. But it's a good reminder when doing this in the future not to use a large brush and paint the whole square. Rather, I'd probably do it using a clean brush and waiting for adjacent colors to dry before painting the extender on the next section. (Meg may even mention this in her video.)

After that, I flew out the door for my walk with Sue. We had a wet morning for walking, but we found one blooming thing along the trail. This is a terrible picture, but I figured you polar vortex people might perk up at the sight of a flower. I think this might be the first blooming thing of 2019.

When I got home again, the kitties were still inside even though their doors were opened. Smitty ran to the glass door to be let out even though it was raining. A few minutes later, I noticed he'd only gotten as far as the shelter of the catio. He was waiting for Sadie to follow, but she folded up like an accordion when I tried to nudge her out the door.

So I iced my knee, ate some lunch, caught up on some email correspondence, and then I got to work finishing off the top for Cricket's pawtrait. I first fused the kitty to her background.

Then I added a narrow stop border. I'll use that same turquoise batik for the binding. Fortunately, my kitty color consultant was willing to conference with me (awesome alliteration).

Finally, I added the outer border and the top was finished. It ended up 14.5 x 17 inches.

Next, I stitched together a couple of scraps of batting and then used some spray baste to layer them together. I'll first do the top-stitching before adding the quilt back. Quilting will come when the back is added.

For now, I'm top-stitching down all the fused pieces using monofilament thread and a microtex 60/8 needle on the machine.

I'm using a clear monofilament thread on the light sections, and I'll switch to a smoky monofilament when I stitch the darker sections.

I was just barely started on this when I quit for the day. Today I'll be spending my time working on this. If I can get the top-stitching finished, I'll start on the thread painting. By the way, Big Bertha is purring like the proverbial kitten now that she's come back and cleaned up and lubricated.

So here's something: I learned last night that my little quilt for Project Quilting 10.2 was voted Viewer's Choice winner! To say I was surprised would be a huge understatement. There were some fabulous quilts this time around, and so I'm both honored and humbled to have won.

I've participated in Project Quilting for a couple of years, but this is the first time I've won anything.

Finally, it's time to choose a goal for:

Matthew has already spoken for the Rainbow Jubilee quilt. Now that he's outfitted his van with a bed for sleeping, I really want to get that one finished. It's a good size for him to use in his van. For February, my goal is to get the blocks sewn together into a flimsy.

If all goes as planned, I'll get it quilted in March and be able to give it to him for his birthday in April.

Today will be spent sewing mostly. It's going to be a wet weekend with snow in the forecast for Monday. Fingers crossed. The bugs were terrible last summer. I'm talking yellow jackets and box elder beetles. We could really use a good hard freeze to kill off some of those pests.