Soggy Tuesday

It rained much of the day yesterday. After about ten days of summer weather, it was a little bit of a relief to see the rain. Since I didn't have to water the flower pots, it gave me plenty of time for sewing. My first task was to finish off the "Stitch" sampler.

Before I could finish this, I had one more new-to-me stitch to try. This is an English Daisy stitch. It's a little like doing trapunto embroidery. I fused a little disk of flannel where I wanted to make the stitch. The pattern suggested felt for this, but I had none. By adding some Heat 'n Bond Lite to the back of the flannel, it should prevent fraying, and it made it easier to stitch since the disk was held fast to the fabric.

Then I stitched two rings of lazy daisy stitches over the top, one in white floss, and one in yellow. In the center are several 3-wrap French knots. And that was fairly easy.

I have another stitch sampler to do eventually, and so I'll put the finished piece aside until I get this next one stitched up.

Then, I'll sew both pieces into a little runner. It should be cute.

With the rain coming down, the kitties were at loose ends.

What should we do, Smitty?

I don't know, Sadie. If we bother Mom enough, she might open the clubhouse.

Or maybe we can talk her into giving us some catnip, Smitty. This stuff here is a little stale.

I'll just sit where she's cutting, Sadie. She'll open the clubhouse then. It works every time.

Genius move, Smitty! I'm heading up there now.

I'm right behind you, Sadie.

Okay, well the kitties conspired and bothered me enough that I had to open the clubhouse doors just to get them to make way for my next project. It seemed high time to start sewing the Snow Globe blocks together. I'm going to set it the way it's set on the pattern cover, and I used her choice of fabrics to inform my own choices.

She's using a sort of pinkish fabric with circles, and I had just the thing in my stash.

I used this fabric as the back for a baby quilt I made quite some time ago.

That's a terrible picture, but it hardly matters since the fabric I'm talking about was all on the quilt back. I really liked it, and so I was very happy to find it at my local quilt shop in their "bargain basement." If I'm remembering correctly, it was the end of a bolt, and so I got a good price on it, and I had four yards altogether. When the cutting was finished, I still had about a yard left.

It took about an hour to do all the cutting and trimming.

I even cut the binding strips from this fabric.

You might remember that I used this fabric for the borders on the "Yard Art" quilt a while back.

I had about half a yard left, and that was just enough to cut eight binding strips.

The next task was to "snowball" all the embroidered blocks. That took about an hour.

And then I started sewing the sashing strips together.

I had them mostly done when I needed to leave to pick up our CSA share. The CSA share did not disappoint. It was chock full of greens, herbs, squash, potatoes, onions, and other goodies. By the time I left, I was cooking in my head. It's always good to see the farmers at the beginning of the season. After somewhere in the neighborhood of five years as a member, they feel like family.

Just before sitting down to write this post, I looked outside and noticed how pretty the mountain is looking.

We're expecting rain most of the week. I'm hoping it will let up Friday morning because Sue and I are making a visit to Salem to see the peony gardens. I'll say more about that when the time comes. As for this morning, I spent some time yesterday tracing out the fifth of the 12 barns for the Appalachian Memories quilt.

It's hooped up and waiting for me downstairs. I always like to start with the quilt block.

So that's where I'm headed next. I have grocery shopping to do today, but otherwise, it's an NBS day.