Topsy-Turvy

Okay, so a few of you with sharp eyes noticed the problems with the "Festival" block yesterday. Actually, I'd seen it too, right after I took a picture of it. The bottom row is upside down.

But that was okay because I noticed it right away...fixed it...and then took another picture.

Only by the time I wrote my blog post yesterday morning, I'd forgotten the whole sordid mess and posted the wrong picture. Busted! Congresspeople have gone to jail for less. Anyway...thank you for showing me the error of my ways and giving me a chance to right this terrible wrong. I've turned that topsy-turvy row turvy-topsy now, and you can sleep easy tonight knowing that all is right with the world of quilt blocks. As for my memory...I'm not so sure.

After writing my post yesterday, I happened to look out the window to see wisps of clouds settled in the valley.

When I went downstairs, I found Sadie on the top rung of the kitty pole again. I believe her coups d'etat is a success. She can be found there pretty much any time of the day now.

Smitty still draws a bright red line at the threshold of our bedroom. He sleeps with me at night and that is the one bit of ground he refuses to cede...for now.

Most of the day was taken up packing food and getting organized, but there was some time toward the end of the day to make up the first block for my newest project, "Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs." I wandered into Anni Downs online shop at Hatched and Patched one evening and came out with a pattern for a new project. You might remember I made her Gardener's Journal quilt some time ago.

For whatever reason, I started wondering what else she was up to lately, and so I checked online. If memory serves (and I think it does), I purchased another of her patterns during the same visit.

Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs was originally a block of the month that might have included a fabric kit. The fabrics used for the BOM were a linen background with wool applique. I'm using an off-white Kona solid for the background and scraps from my stash for the applique. There is some hand embroidery, and I'm doing fusible machine applique. Probably I would enjoy doing hand applique, but there are only so many hours in the day for slow stitching. Mine are taken up with hand embroidery.

Right away I had helpers.

Does this quilt have any cats?

Well not this first block. All we have here are pigs. I first traced and fused the applique pieces.

Smitty was a huge help here (emphasis on "huge"). He planted himself on the pattern, which made it a little difficult to use the picture as a guide.

Allow me to demonstrate my usefulness as a door. 

Once I had the applique in place, I was ready to trace in the embroidery lines.

If there's time today, I'll top-stitch the applique, and then this will be ready for embroidery when its turn comes up. (I have a lot of embroidery blocks waiting in line just now.)

Today I'll be doing some final packing, and we take off tomorrow morning. With that in mind, I won't be blogging tomorrow. I will be blogging while we're traveling, but it always depends on internet access. If you've been following for a while, then you know how this goes. We're also factoring in our new cell phone carrier. We haven't traveled with this new carrier before, and so we'll have to test out our coverage. When there is no park wifi (and let's be clear...RV park wifi almost never works for us), then we rely on our cell phone hot spots for internet access. It works well, but it does require a good cell phone signal.

So, I'm signing off for a day or two. As we always say to the kitties as we close the door...see you on the other side.