Mostly Slow Stitching

Since I was waiting for a delivery that required a signature, I stayed mostly on the main level of the house yesterday, and that meant plenty of slow stitching. First, I finished off the first block for the Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs quilt. This block is called "Flying Pigs and Other Things."

You might recall I was a little worried about stitching the outer running stitch without a hoop, but it worked out just fine. The Kona solid background fabric wants to fray a little. By keeping the edge I was stitching closest too me, I avoided dragging it around in my lap too much. When it was finished, it seemed early enough in the morning to venture downstairs to trim it up. While I was there, I traced out the last block for the Sundress quilt.

I won't get started on this one for a couple of days at least because there's already plenty of hand stitching to do finishing off bindings. With that in mind, I took the opportunity to sandwich the Bunny Garden quilt for quilting before heading upstairs again.

Once there, I went to work applying the binding clips and squaring the corners for the Rainbow Jubilee quilt.

And then, I stitched and stitched and stitched until I had turned two corners. I estimate I've only made my way around about 1/3 of the quilt, but half the corners are finished.

After that, I had some lunch, drank a cup of espresso, and waited around a bit for the delivery guy to show up. Finally around 1:00, he came and went, and I could get busy quilting the Bunny Garden.

There isn't a lot of room on this little quilt since the embroidery pretty solidly takes up the whole space. With that in mind, I quilted a few straight lines across the piece and around the edge.

Then I used one of the fancy stitches on my sewing machine to quilt some little stuff in the border. This is stitch #137 on my Bernina 750QE.

I used it to stitch in every other piece of the piano key border and then diagonally out in the corners.

With that finished, I dug around in my scrap bindings and came out with a piece long enough to finish it off. (I love it when I can use scrap bindings.)

Just now I noticed the carrot got a little cattywampus when I took it's picture. I think it just got twisted on the sewing machine a little. Then I took it upstairs to finish hand-stitching it. It seems to have grown ears in the process.

When it was finished, I laid it on the floor for its picture. Instantly, it attracted two cats. It seems to be a cat magnet.

Okay, and there it is...one finished little quilt for Easter. It ended up 13 x 14 inches.

Here's how it looks from the back.

And that was the end of my quilting day.

This morning, I'm walking with Sue. We've both been south for the winter since the last time we walked. It's been about six weeks since we've seen one another, and so I'm looking forward to getting back to our Friday morning walks. Hopefully, the rain will hold off until we're finished, but no promises.