Some Transparency

It was a busy day yesterday. I left fairly early and didn't get home until 2:00 p.m. I can't even remember what happened to the rest of the afternoon, but I know dinner was involved. Before I left home, I had time to trace out my second emergency back-up stitchery to take along on our trip.

I was off getting my toes done, and getting my hair done, and then I needed to spend some money so I could save some money before a deal ended at the end of the month. I'll show you a picture of my new do eventually. My hair is cut in a style similar to former British Prime Minister Theresa May with a little Elizabeth Warren thrown in for sass. It always takes me a few days to figure out proper blow-drying, thus the delay in pictures.

In yesterday's mail, I found the mug rug from my Teal Mini Swap partner. We were each provided a 10 x 10 piece of this fabric, and the teal fabric must appear on the front.

Look at what a beautiful job she did on this machine embroidered stretching cat:

Here's how it looks from the back.

Up until now, I've only given you peeks of the mug rug I made for her.

Now that we both have our mug rugs, I can reveal mine. She asked for something modern. I'm not accustomed to doing modern blocks, and so this was a little bit of a stretch for me. I did it using the quilt-as-you-go method. I thought that would be enough to keep the strips from curving off to one side, but only up to a point, apparently.

Here's how it looks from the back.

There are still two mystery projects to show you, and all will be revealed tomorrow, my friends. I know you're sitting there on tenterhooks waiting to see what's up my blog sleeve.

Late in the day, I made my way into the sewing room. There, I first wanted to catch up on the two Tiny Tuesday blocks I needed to make. First, this quarter log cabin block.

Then, this hour glass block. This one could have been made in three different sizes. I'm so utterly pressed for time right at the moment that I did the easiest largest one.

Those are all caught up now. I can't wait to fall behind again during the month of September. When I come back, I'll be four weeks behind.

It's been hot here for the past couple of days, and so we've been running the air-conditioner for only the second time this summer. It makes my basement sewing room cold as a meat locker. Smitty had to sit on his paws to keep warm.

It was too cold for Sadie. She decided to take a nap next to the unlit fireplace. A girl can always hope, can't she?

Okay, and then, this. Surely you remember this block, don't you? I hope you all got a good laugh out of it, but honestly, I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.

So I fixed that. It was going to keep me awake at night.

Isn't it weird how you can look right at such a glaring error and not see it?

Okay, and speaking of this quilt, here's the picture of the finished quilt from the pattern cover. You can see that all the pieced blocks go around the outside edge.

Since I'm saving the Dresdens for when we get back from our trip (making the yo-yo centers along the way), I can go ahead and start piecing the middle section together. And just to show you I'm not kidding around with this, I sewed the first border on the large center section. Here it is...oh, wait.

Okay, there we go.

And that was as far as I got with it. There's lots more sewing to do, but I'm still hoping I can get the center section sewn together before we leave on Sunday. That's a big optimistic hope though because there is still so much to do to get ready.

Today I'm going to the grocery store. When I get back, I'm going to start some food prep on things I can do ahead. I've made and frozen several casseroles, and I'll do two more today. There will be even more to do tomorrow. So that's enough whining about how much I have to do. Time to stop whining and get going.