Nothing But Sewing

With the weather clouding over and raining yesterday, I stayed inside and sewed my guts out. It isn't often I can sew myself into sewing exhaustion, but yesterday was the day. Smitty thought this was a terrible idea. After getting to spend time outside the day before, he was pretty disappointed to find the door closed to him again. When I went downstairs yesterday, I looked back up the stairs to see him glaring at me.

Did you know that one of the collective nouns for a group of cats is a "glaring"? It's true. It's easy to see why. They can also be called a "clowder" or a "clutter" or a "pounce." Here at the Three Cats Ranch, it's almost exclusively a glaring.

My first stop of the day was to finish off the embroidery on the "Lord Bless You" piece. I took it downstairs and added a narrow border, quilt-as-you-go style. I had in mind to put some fancy stitching around the edges of the center panel, but I didn't really have enough room. I'd cut it to leave 3/4 of an inch, and most of my stitches were going to take up the whole width and crowd the hand embroidery. Instead, I stitched a lavender triple stitch around the edge and called it good.

The binding was pulled from my scrap binding bag, and so this piece was made completely with scraps and stuff I had on hand. The polka dot fabric is a long-time resident from my stash, and so I was glad to find a way to use it.

Next, I wanted to finish off the top for the Half Square Affair piece. There were still eight HST's left from this set, and so I extended the center arrow sections off into the border by one pair each. I'd figured this all out mathematically, but then made the mistake of cutting the second two sides too short. I could have recut them, but decided instead to bring more red into the piece by cutting some cornerstones from the outer border fabric. With the first border, it looked like this.

Then I added the second border. I think this will make a nice little fall table topper. And you can think of those center arrows as geese flying south...or don't. Think whatever you want. It ended up at 28 inches square.

I'm going to use this next fabric on the back. It's another long-time resident of my stash. When it's all finished, I'll give it a dark green binding. For now, it'll go into the quilts-to-be-sandwiched pile.

So then, I had another idea for using yet another set from the trashy triangles. This next quilt will end up as a donation to Quilts for Kids. They aren't accepting quilts at the moment, but they will be eventually. It'll probably take me that long to get it sandwiched and quilted. So I had something like 36 of those 3-3/4-inch HST's. I sewed them together into diamonds, and then I had enough of the pink fabric left to cut more 7-inch blocks and fill it in. I still need to sew this together, but here's my layout.

It's hard to tell from this image, but the white sections of the quilt are tone-on-tone snowflakes. I used that fabric in the Snow Globes quilt, still waiting its turn in the quilts-to-be-quilted pile.

So I wanted to give my trashy quilt a name, and I started thinking about what flowers might bloom through the snow. The first ones I ever see are crocus, and so that gave me the name: Trashy Crocus...unless you can come up with something better. Suggestions are appreciated.

Okay, so I was a little concerned about leaving it on the design floor like that, but just look at these sweet kitty helpers.

Surely no one with a face so sweet would mess up my blocks, right?

And this guy...perfectly angelic, right?

Wrong.

I don't know who's responsible for this travesty, but I have my ideas.

And let me just tell you, redesigning quilts is 'zhausting work. Sadie needed a nap after that.

I was kind of tired of sewing by then, and so I headed back upstairs to finish hand-sewing the binding on the "Lord Bless You" piece. This is a pattern from Jenny of Elefantz. It was a free pattern to begin with, and I looked for the link, but couldn't find it. If you like this piece and you want to make it, then just email me, and I'll send it to you. Here's how it looks.

I used the same polka dot on the back. Since I embroidered through the batting, I didn't need to do much quilting. It ends up at 10 x 11 inches.

This is a pay-it-forward gift for a friend from high school. I'll be putting it in the mail to her in a few days. And this is Sunday, so I'll be linking up to

It's hard to tell what's going on with the weather today. It was sunny when I got out of bed, but now it's overcast again. I'm strictly a fair-weather gardener, and so the rest of the day's activities will depend on whether the sun shows itself again. I still need to clean-up the culinary herb garden, and I'll do that if it warms up some. I happen to know that would be Smitty's choice. If not, I'll get back to work sewing together the blocks for the Trashy Crocus quilt.