Happy Thanksgiving!

Good morning, my friends! Turkey day is here...for better or worse. It isn't the first time we've spent Thanksgiving away from our kids. The first time was in 2017, when we made our trip around the perimeter of the United States. We missed them terribly that year, but our dinner was good. This year will be the same, but it's harder to be separated when there are only a few miles between us. We've talked about visiting via Facetime, but nothing else has been said about that. I had in mind to get an early start yesterday. Then, I looked at what was going to be involved in cooking our dinner for tonight, and decided it was a one day affair. Hopefully, I won't regret that decision. Either way, it will mean an early start.

Instead of cooking, I spent the day sewing, and I got a lot done. I even got caught up on housework! A red letter day! As I mentioned yesterday, I was in the middle of making the next Shop Hop block. I had the embroidery for the name plate finished:

Next, I cut the focus fabric. We visited BJ's Fabric & Quilts when we traveled to the Oregon Coast to see the Neskowin Ghost Forest. I was amazed to find a quilt shop in such a small town. You can read my post about the quilt shop right here. Our visit to the Neskowin Ghost Forest was a rainy day tragedy. We'd like to go back when the weather is better, but you can read about what we saw on that rainy day right here. Seeing the ghost forest caused me to choose this fabric for my quilt:

When the quilt block was finished, it looked like this:

I'm loving these Polaroid blocks for this quilt. You can find the pattern for the picture block right here. Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt so far:

The tutorial for the camera block can be found right here.

Okay, so with that finished, I moved to the next WIP on my list, and got started on the fifth of 12 blocks for New Mexico Kitchen. This is the image from the pattern cover. Sorry it's so grainy.

Each block for this quilt comes with a recipe for the food represented in the block. Here's the recipe to go with this one:

So, the first step is to create a background for the applique. I've been looking at the cover picture and trying to choose something similar.

Somehow, I wasn't up for starting the applique, and so I took a long break after I'd made the background. Then, surprisingly, I was able to get all the fusing done when it was time to quit for the day.

Like many of you, I'll be spending the biggest part of today in the kitchen. Still, I'm hoping I'll have at least a little time to start on the top-stitching for this block. It still needs to have borders added, and then there's the damnable fringe for the table cloth. It's the one part of this quilt that is extremely annoying to work on, but I do like the effect. There's both machine and hand embroidery to do as well, so this block is far from finished.

And that brings me to now. I'm going to do a little slow-stitching, and then I'll get started on some wild rice stuffing for our little Cornish game hens, and I'm going to make a pecan pie for two. Most of our dinner will have to wait until this afternoon, but I can get a start by cutting some things up and refrigerating them until it's time to start cooking. 

So, one last time...Happy Thanksgiving, my friends. I hope the end of the day finds you in a food coma, no matter what's on your Thanksgiving table for this scaled-down celebration. Let's hope next year finds us in better times.