Two-fer

There were two little finishes yesterday, and one of those was a combination of two. So you can decide how to interpret the title of this post. Just now I searched out the definition of a "two-fer." And I suppose everyone knows what it means, but we're all about accuracy here at the Three Cats Ranch...especially when it comes to the titles of our posts. So let's just see...

Well...nothing is for sale here...at least not yet. I did, however, finish off two items yesterday, and I combined two quilts into one, so you do the math. 

First, I finished off the 10th block for "I Believe in Snowmen." 

Then I headed into the sewing room to finish off the Tiny Trees quilt top. As I mentioned yesterday, the left point of the tree was cut off when I sewed the green border on. After giving it some thought, I removed the border on the left and resewed it. The seam is very close to the edge of the fabric, and so I gave it a healthy helping of Fray Check as insurance. I think it will be fine. This quilt ends up as a wall-hanging, and so it should hold up. Here's what I had after I finished with that. What you see here is the Tiny Tree that results if you make the Tiny Tree blocks from Temecula Quilt Co.'s recent sew-along.

Smitty helped me with the layout, but we were both undecided about how to attach the embroidered trees, and especially about what fabric we should use. We even brought in the Resident Engineer to help us decide.

These were the ideas...use the same green as spacers between the blocks. Frame the blocks with green. Frame the spacers with the silver and gold background fabric. It didn't seem as if there would be enough contrast if I used only the silver and gold background fabric. Then, in a blinding flash, I thought red! It needs some red! So I went digging around through my Christmas stash and found this fabric. Purrfect!!!

And in pretty short order, I had it all sewn together. These are the 12 embroidered blocks from Mary Corbet's Needle and Thread.

Then, I dug around through my scrap bindings and came out with this one. There are yards and yards of this...more than I'll need for this little 25 x 27 inch quilt. If memory serves, this was the binding for Gingerbread Square, and I must have miscalculated when I made it.

And then I decided on this long-time resident of my Christmas stash for the quilt back.

It's one of the first fabrics I purchased after I started quilting. I've only used it once before, when I made a table runner for a family member.

And I'm happy to say the Tiny Trees quilt was made entirely from scraps in my stash...unless you want to quibble about the beads I purchased for the embroidered tree blocks. Those were most definitely new.

After that, I decided to clean up the sewing room and stop for the day. I had three projects worth of mess sitting around, but it's all tidied up now, and ready for the next mess. I'm kind of excited to make this little mini scissors case with needle minder from We All Sew.

It's just what I need for my slow-stitching projects. I have some little snips, and I have a variety of needles for use in different projects. A friend made it recently and she said it was easy and fun. And we're all about fun here, so what the heck?

On the "not-fun" schedule is take poor Smitty to the vet to get a rabies vaccine. He will not be happy about that insult. It shouldn't take too big a bite out of my day...unless Smitty turns into Fang and bites me...and I would deserve it.

So that's today's agenda. Smitty would appreciate it if you would keep him in your thoughts today as he's loaded into a torture cage and driven off to the executioner. The torment never ends.