Three Little Quilt Tops

Well, I sewed, and sewed, and sewed, and completely wore myself out yesterday. All the while, I had loads of laundry going in the washing machine, and so it was a productive day. Nevertheless, I flaked on my pie-baking for Pi Day. It was raining, and so I didn't get my weeds pulled. Oh well. I kept thinking I'd take a break for the pie, but then I really just wanted to keep sewing. It was surprising when the third quilt top was finished how weary I was. Clearly, I'm not back to my old self yet. To be clear, I'm still old, but I've slowed considerably. Unless I'm just making excuses, I believe there is enough pain left in my bones that a day-long burst of activity was exhausting. When 4:00 rolled around, I had to stop. 

So let's just see what I did, shall we? My first task was to get my next slow-stitching pieces made up. The day's activities were made more taxing when I spent about 45 minutes searching for the power cord for my lightbox. Mike and I looked everywhere for it. Checking the blog, I knew I had it along on our trip because I used it to trace out the inchies. So...it had to be in the RV, or else in the stuff we brought in from the RV. After looking everywhere I could think of at least three times, I finally remember one bin I hadn't checked. Bingo! Sheesh. I might have made another quilt top in the time I spent searching, but oh well.

These are the "Posies" embroidery patterns from Jenny of Elefantz. I'm stitching mine in conjunction with this year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge. So I made up February's block...

And March's block:

I'll start stitching on those this morning. They shouldn't take long. When they're finished, I'll add borders in the color of the month.

After that, I made a quilt top from the Stitched Inchies 3.0 piece. These were the inchies from Meg Hawkey's stitch-along for International Embroidery Month in February. I gave it a pink stop border. Several different colors were auditioned, but I liked how the pink brought out the pink embroidery stitches.

The feather border fabric was in keeping with the "bird theme" on the inchies. It was one of the fabrics I purchased at Rosie's Calico Cupboard in San Diego last month. It ends up at 18 x 22 inches. Also, I cut the back fabric for it from this yardage in my stash. More birds.

Smitty would like to know where the birds are that left behind all those feathers. He will escort them outdoors, if necessary, before they start pooping everywhere. (He's very helpful when it comes to birds.)

In other bird quilting, I put borders on the little Rise & Shine quilt. The embroidery pattern was free from Lynette Anderson. I used some fabric I found in my stash for the borders.

The pattern was free, but the buttons were not. I was dismayed to find they hadn't been bored through so that I could sew them on. I tried to link to these in an earlier post and found they were no longer available in her shop. Now, I have an idea it's because they were defective. I tried poking holes through them using an old sewing machine needle and a math compass. It didn't work, but no problem. Mike came in with a tiny drill bit and bored them out. (I love a man with a good drill, don't you?)

When the top was finished, I went in search of a good backing fabric, and found this scrap "chicken feed" fabric used for another quilt backing. Perfect.

This one is sandwiched for quilting now. The top is very small, and I want to sew the buttons through all three layers as a way of "tying" the quilt in the center embroidery section. I'll quilt the rest. It'll be 14.5 x 15.5 inches when it's all finished.

About that time, Sadie showed up to help me finish off the Quilt Shop redwork piece. She held everything down while I worked.

She also pointed the way with her hind peets while I cut those borders.

When the top was finished, it looked like this. The thimble fabric was another I picked up on our trip. It was a bargain at 3 yards for $21. Since I have three yards, I'll use it for the quilt back too. And this one ends up a 18 x 23 inches.

When that was finished, my body said loudly, "Enough!" I was tired. I went upstairs and warmed up my Warmie (thanks, Gail!)...

and called it a day. By the way, my Warmie is a donkey, and I figure that means he's a Democrat. I named him Joe. He's so soft and cuddly. If you want one for your own, you can find a whole zoo of them right here. I like Joe so much, I got one for my pig-loving friend Sue. Can you guess which animal I picked for her?

So today will be a mish-mash of stuff. We'll be getting our first vaccine this afternoon...YAY!!! And then we have a couple of errands to run. There's a quilt exhibit going on at the Chehalem Cultural Center in our little town of Newberg. I might be able to talk Mike into going with me. Just now, I looked up the link for the exhibit and found they're closed on Mondays, so I guess Mike is off the hook. I'll get there eventually though...just you wait. We'll be on the side of town where the bird shop is, and so we'll stop in to get a replacement rain shield for our bird feeder. One fell to the ground and broke while we were gone. So, it's not a big outing, but there could be a big wait at the vaccine clinic. We'll see. 

If there's time, I still want to bake that tart, and I still have more little quilts to move on to quilting stage. Plenty to do, and I haven't even started on housework yet. I'll save that delightful task for tomorrow. Who knows...I might be sick from the vaccine, and then I could delay housework another day. (Thinking. The woman is always thinking.) For now, I'll get going on my slow-stitching.