A Sewing Day

It was windy for most of the day yesterday. The RV park is adjacent to and somehow connected to a winery and small vineyard. We ended up walking over to the tasting room yesterday morning. We were on the hunt for a wine we'd purchased on our last visit here two years ago. None was available, and so what could we do but taste what was available? While there, we spoke with the two women behind the counter who informed us the wind would be with us for the next two weeks. This was dismaying since it would be nice to have better weather for Erik and Mae when they come next week...escaping the awful weather in Portland. Regardless of what the two women said, the wind died down yesterday evening, and there has been none all night. We slept well. I'm really hoping that is the last of it.

After our wine excursion, I got to work on my day's stitching. First, my inchy for the day.

After that, I laid out the Tiny Tuesday blocks into a 6 x 7 block arrangement. My only goal was to get a good mix of colors and to alternate, both horizontally and vertically, the straight set blocks with the diagonal set ones. My design bed was barely long enough to hold all of them.

When I was satisfied with the arrangement, they were stacked into rows and I started sewing them together. Here are the first two rows.

And two more.

I did this all under the watchful eye of Miss Sadie. She helped me with the rows of blocks.

Smitty helped me with the sewing.

When I had the top four rows sewn together, I sewed together the bottom three rows.

With both halves finished, I sewed the top four and the bottom three rows together.

There are still two more blocks. They'll either be used on the quilt back, or end up as orphans. Or...they might end up as a part of my "triangulation" quilt top, not yet started. I have a gallon zip-lock bag along with me stuffed to overflowing with bonus triangles from many years of projects. That might actually be next on my sewing agenda.

Well, of course any quilt worth making is subject to the most rigorous inspection. Here, Smitty sat directly on top of the cat block in order to make clear who the alpha cat is.

So next...probably today...I'll be sewing a narrow stop border on this, and then another border around the outside to make a finished flimsy. But do you remember when I bought this fabric at the quilt shop? I was looking for something "rainbow stripe" to use for the stop border and binding. They didn't have exactly what I wanted, but I thought this one would work.

So yesterday, when I took out the supplies I'd brought along for this quilt, I found this one...a long-time resident of my stash.

Doh! And it was the exact fabric I had in mind. I was so wishing I'd brought it along, only to find that I had. I'm telling you, I have a mind like a steel trap. I'll probably still use the one I purchased for the quilt back, but that decision will wait until we get home and I can review the rest of my stash. I might find a better quilt back there.

So okay...and in the image below, the fabric on the right is the one I've used as the background for all the blocks in the quilt. I barely had enough to finish them off. In my wanderings over the past year with this quilt, I worried aloud, while blogging, that I wouldn't have enough to finish the blocks. Then one of you piped up with an offer to send me the fabric on the left. I'm sorry I can't remember who it was, but if it was you, then thank you very much. I believe I have plenty of that one for the outer border.

But it was getting late in the day by that time, and I didn't want to start on the borders. So I packed everything up while Mike got Smitty out for a walk. Sadie watched from her window perch. You can barely see Smitty peeking out from behind Sadie's right ear in the image below.

When I had the machine sewing supplies put away, I worked a little more on the fourth Snowflake. It's a little hard to see what is stitched and what still needs stitching, but you can see where I left it in the image below.

Just the outside "ring" is left to finish. Then, I'll be adding beads in the areas where all the circles appear.

So that was my day yesterday. It'll be another slow day today. Possibly we'll get out for a walk now that the wind has died down. Ordinarily the wind wouldn't stop us, but this wind feels like an Arctic blast. Also, I want to add the borders to the quilt top, and call it a finished flimsy.

There is a free waffle breakfast on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays here in the RV park. We'll probably head over there this morning. Waffles sound good right now.