Big Quilt, Little Quilt

It's been raining for days. The weather was supposed to improve today, but so far, there's no sign of it. Even Smitty and Sadie are disgusted by the rain. Ordinarily, kitties do not mind a little Oregon drizzle, but it was too much for them yesterday. Smitty still likes sitting on the wood box outside the dining room window.

From this vantage point, he can survey his kingdom and keep an eye out for any varmints. Sadie is happier inside, where it's warm and dry. She spent enough time outside before she came to the Three Cats Ranch to live.

We had a grocery shopping trip yesterday morning, and we were able to find everything we went in for...except bread flour, which I'm told isn't really necessary. There was, however, some all-purpose flour. I have plenty of that for now. I'm told you can make your own bread flour by adding a teaspoon of high gluten flour for each cup of all-purpose. On the other hand, plenty of people have told me they never use bread flour, and so I wonder if it makes any difference.

When we got home, I spent some time on my slow-stitching project. There's still a ways to go on this, but I'm making progress.

After lunch, I got to work quilting another row of quilt blocks on the Shop Hop quilt. Three rows are finished now, with five to go. It's been fairly enjoyable doing it in small bites like this.

This first block is the second of the "doubles" in the quilt. It was the first shop we visited when we did our USA Perimeter trip starting in 2017. We were in Montana to see the Ringing Rocks, and this quilt shop was nearby. It was a fun shop with some very friendly ladies. I'd been taking pictures of barns since we left home, and so this seemed a good choice.

At the other end of that trip, we were traveling up the California coastline, seeing a lot of lighthouses and visiting some places we hadn't been before. This ocean print was a good choice for this shop. And this was such a pretty shop. It's near where the Empty Spools seminars at Asilomar happen, and so it was a place familiar to many quilters.

I met up with my friend Heidi to see this next shop in Henderson, Nevada. Heidi blogs at Red Letter Quilts, although it's been a while since she wrote. It was late spring when we visited Henderson, and so we'd seen lots of blooming cactus along the way. When I cut the "name plate" for this block, I cut it off center. Then, what to do? What to do? Rather than redo the lettering, I copied one of the cactus from the fabric and embroidered it beside the name. Visually, you don't notice it when you look at the whole quilt, and that was good enough for me.

Coincidentally, it was at this shop that I bought the backing fabric for this quilt. Here it is:

I'm told this next shop is no longer in business, which is a shame, because it was a lovely shop in a lovely setting. Las Cruces is not a large place, although I believe there is a New Mexico State University campus there. It sits at the edge of the Organ Mountains, and it is a very scenic area. I chose this fabric on my visit, although I didn't have an idea to make this quilt yet.

I've used the fabric in a small swap quilt...this one:

It was a small table-topper size, and I think I used the fabric on the back as well.

This next fabric was purchased as we crossed off one of our big bucket list items: seeing Niagara Falls for the first time. Leaves were just beginning to change at this part of our trip.

This next fabric was purchased when we visited Acadia National Park...another bucket list item. While it was tempting to purchase something with lobsters, I chose this one with lobster trap floats.

It was because of this view at Acadia National Park that I decided. Can you see it almost smack in the middle of the image below?

Here...let me zoom in. I'm not sure why, but these insignificant moments tend to stand out in my memories.

Finally, this one. If memory serves, this is the only fabric from a quilt shop in Canada. In fact, it may be the only quilt shop I've visited in Canada. The choice of fabric was obvious. And, Canada, I have always loved your flag.

A row of blocks is a good amount for this quilt. A large quilt, it's bulky and heavy to move around on my table. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've set a new goal for myself. One goal is to finish quilting one of my sandwiched quilts every month. But now I've added to that to finish off one of the small quilts each month as well. These are quilts small enough to quilt on my domestic machine. They are easy to move around and lightweight, so it doesn't put as much stress on my ancient wrists.

So I'm quilting this Tiny Trees quilt. You might remember when I stitched all the tiny trees. These were so much fun. Then I combined it with a quilt-along from Temecula Quilt Co. called "Tiny Tree," I think. I decided to combine the two projects into one small quilt.

These are the threads I'll be using. The white one is actually a metallic thread, and so it has a pearlescent sparkle.

Yesterday, I quilted the large center tree with a swirly motif using the green variegated thread.

Then I stitched some falling snow into the white background. I had only one side complete when I decided to quit for the day.

Our weather was suppose to improve for today, but it's showing no signs of that just yet. I want to get out and pull some weeds and plant some of the sunflowers. It might burn off by afternoon, so we'll see. Regardless, I'll quilt another row of the Shop Hope quilt, which will bring me to halfway. If there's still time left, I'll get back to work quilting the little quilt too.