3/22/20

Productive Day

The weather has been lovely, and I've been blowing my opportunity for yard work by spending my time in the sewing room. But, oh, how I've been itching to get back into the sewing room. The season is young, and so I hope I won't regret this time. We're expecting rain beginning tomorrow and well into the future. Too bad it doesn't knock down those little virus bugs the way it knocks down dust.

So, here's what I did. My goal in 2020 is to finish a quilt top and to quilt one quilt per month. Once those two are finished, I can work on my other WIPs. In March, I'd hoped to quilt Farm Fresh Eggs and to piece together a top from the Stitch Sampler. And, well, mission accomplished. Both were small quilts, and so I was able to get them both done yesterday.

Starting with the Stitch Sampler, I first cut the two pieces to the same size. These patterns can be found on the Crabapple Hill Studios website. They're not meant to be together, but I stitched them as practice on some of the fancier stitches. I wanted to put both together into a wall hanging or a little runner.


I added a pale yellow flange to each piece.


And then I gave them a pink border. It ended up at 16-1/2 inches by 25-1/2 inches...probably a little runner size.


For the binding strips, I had a pink stripe picked out. It was too much pink, and so I decided on this green stripe instead.


Also, I cut and pieced this backing leftover from the cut-off ends from another project.


And then I tossed it onto the quilts to be sandwiched pile. No ceremony was held.

After that, it was time to get to work on the little Farm Fresh Eggs project. This pattern can be found on the Bird Brain Designs website. I saw it on Instagram, and was instantly smitten. I had to buy it and stitch it immediately. Now it's just waiting for its chance to be turned into a wall-hanging. So, I first needed to quilt it, and then trim it. Here's when the help showed up.


It was simply quilted. I put a tightly wound feather around the outside of the stitching.


And then a free-hand diagonal grid around the outer border.


When it was ready for binding, it looked like this.


Sadie helped me work out the math on the binding. I chose a leftover binding from my scrap binding bag.


Little cats love little quilts.


And, to you non-cats out there, Sadie would like to say that any job worth doing is worth doing with claws extended. Consider this your tip for the day.


When the binding was sewn on, it looked like this. Today I'll get to work hand-sewing the binding. It shouldn't take long.


Here's how it looks from the back.


After so much helping, Sadie had a little nip...


and then a little nap.


The whiteboard in my sewing room needed updating. Here's my year laid out with months assigned to various projects.


These are readyfor quilting. You can see that nearly the whole year is mapped out already. Sorry for the blur. I had to shoot without flash in order to avoid a reflection.


These are quilts that need sandwiching, but really...there isn't much point when I have so many in line ahead of them. The smaller ones will probably get done sooner.


And I didn't spend the whole day in the sewing room. I got Handsome out for a walk. He ate grass until I thought he'd start looking like a scarecrow. He really is loving his walks, even if he is on a leash. We tried getting Sadie out, but she won't allow us to put a harness on. Just looking at the harness seems to freak her out. She might have negative associations with it after the debacle in North Dakota a few years back. We'll keep trying, and we might try a different harness. We'd love to get her out, but she's an anxious little girl. It might not work.


While I was out, I got this shot of the flowering plum trees. These are ornamental trees only. The Italian prune plum tree is budded out, but not yet blooming.


Finally, I left the snowflake like this yesterday. Most of the darkest floss is stitched now, and I'll start working with the medium value soon.


With so much embroidery in this post, I'll link it up to


So that was my day yesterday. Today I'll get the hand stitching finished on Farm Fresh Eggs, and then I'll start working on some of the WIPs that were left behind when we started our trip. Probably my first priority is to finish making blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge from last year. I didn't start a new project this year because I want to focus on getting some of the others finished. If things continue as they are for very long, I'll probably have lots of time for sewing.

9 comments:

Julierose said...

you've had a lovely day keeping busy and having sewing fun...;)))
Your Farm Fresh Eggs came out beautifully..great colors surrounding the embroidery...hugs from afar Julierose

Angela said...

Fabulous stitching!

Karrin Hurd said...

Beautiful stitching, you look like you have been quite busy!

Jill said...

Farm fresh eggs is delightful. A tempt worthy project. You did a great job! Neat and tidy free motion feathers. Well done. Our rescue cat would wear a harness until she outgrew it after staying awhile.

CathieJ said...

I love the snowflake and your little quilt. Sadie is such a good little helper.

piecefulwendy said...

I had plans to sew on Sunday, but we opted to go out for a drive. After all that activity, I opted for a nap and Wilbs joined me. He was still napping on my lap when I woke up, so I really didn't want to interrupt his dreams. Needless to say, no sewing happened. This morning, Wilbur the Curious decided to check out the kitchen cabinet with our glasses and cups. Only one water glass was broken (sigh). Note to self: leave no cabinet door open, not even for a nano-second. Haha! Love all of your little quilts, and those snowflakes are really fun.

kc said...

Wow, you and Sadie did an awesome job of color coordinating on that Farm Fresh piece....it's beautiful! And I love that feather you did around the outside...stunning. I am green with envy.

We've been hunkered down for several days- you would be real unhappy here. Waaaay to warm for you. Hopefully, though, since COVID 19 seems to dislike warm and humid, we are in optimal position for avoiding that crud. Tho, we did get our first confirmed case just south of us today. I'm sure there are many more, but they are refusing to test anyone until a couple of days ago, when they tested 15. Their results are still pending. I'm not sure how they got that one confirmed case. Amazing how conflicting the stories can get. In the meantime, I am working on our two lap quilts (slowly, very slowly), a childcare bookcase curtain for lady up in MA, and just in case, a couple of facemasks for us and a couple for the ladies up front in the office. I know they aren't medically sound, but they may be better than nothing, and those 2 ladies are pretty old and come in contact with a whole lotta folks. Ours are just in case we run out of veggies or something else we just HAVE to have, and find ourselves at the store. Fingers crossed I can find something that will make do.

Stay safe!

Janis said...

Love your fresh eggs project. It’s an adorable pattern and you made great fabric choices for your border and binding. Mr. Handsome looks very much like our Nigel, our beautiful boy. Thanks for sharing your projects and your companions.
Janis at Canyon Rim Quilting.

QuiltGranma said...

For some reason I envisioned Farm Fresh to be about twice that size! How, Sadie, you ARE an escape artist! We were traveling a few years ago, as Have Cat Will Travel, and our kitty got out of the car at a gas station, even after I cautioned hubby about her... She didn't go far, everything was just too scary out there! Thankfully we got her back. Miss her now though, her time here ended a few years after that. So glad you have such a nice patio for your kitties!