Four More Dresses

It was a productive day yesterday. I was able to cross off all the items on my list. With frequent breaks, I was able to get four more dresses quilted, and I quilted the white border across the top.

My strategy is to quilt one dress and dress border at a time, then take a break to do something else. The fourth dress was quilted late in the day, just before I turned off the machine.

On one of my breaks, I repotted the tomato starts. Now they're ready to become the pasta sauce and salsa they were born to be. Of course, they'll need to grow and fruit first.

When those were finished, I took a little walk around. Nothing new is blooming yet. It's been pretty chilly, and things are behind where they have been in warmer springs. Nevertheless, I have quite a few tulips ready to pop open...if the deer and squirrels don't eat them first.

I keep checking for buds on the poppies, but I don't see anything yet. They are biannuals, and so it's possible they won't bloom this year. On the other hand, it seems as if they should. Maybe more patience is in order.

Also, it seemed like as good a time as any to return the sundial to its pedestal. We take it down in winter since a heavy wet snow will weigh down and break the gnomon.

The shadow makes it hard to read. It says, "The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here."

Of course, Smitty followed me all around, keeping a weather eye out for mousies.

Back inside, I quilted another sundress, and then headed into the sewing room. When I'm finished quilting the Sundress quilt, I have another two small quilts I'd like to finish up. But also on my list for April is to finish the quilt top for I Believe in Snowmen. All the embroidery was finished several months ago.

Looking at the pattern cover, you can see there's some piecing to do in order to finish the quilt top.

For that, I've pulled quite a few fabrics from my stash. The one on the left in the image below will be the quilt back. The rest will all be used in the top.

Since those reds and whites will be pieced side by side, I knew I needed to wash the reds. It's a good thing I did. Look how my color catcher came out! After running them through the washer a second time, my color catcher came out clean.

But while I was at it, I decided to redo the white boards I use to keep myself organized. Mike hung this large white board for me quite some time ago. I was thinking of using it as a projection "screen" to use with an overhead projector. In that way, I could trace out patterns on a transparency, and then make a large pattern by using the large white board screen to draw the pattern onto paper. We drove all the way to Vancouver, Washington, to obtain a used overhead projector for $25. And that was all fine and dandy, but I've never actually used either the white board or the projector. Oh well. I have it if I ever want it. In the meantime though, It seemed completely appropriate to co-opt this larger white board to keep track of my projects. Some people like to use notebooks for this. I like my white boards.

When I had all the information transferred from the small board to the large one, the smaller one was freed up to keep track of the measurements on my finished quilt tops. This way, I only have to measure once to know the size I need for the quilt back and the length of binding.

Before doing this, I was cramming a lot of information into two much smaller white boards. Now I have lots of room to spare. Time to start some new projects, don't you think?

Okay, in other fun news, I wanted to tell you that Smitty is a superstar on Facebook. I follow a group called "I Accempt this Peet Offering." It's a place where the more than 92,000 members post pictures of animal feet (no human feet allowed) and then the members can comment on whether to "accempt" the offering. (The comments are hilarious.) So, when helper cat was helping weigh down my quilting the other day, I offered up his peet for accemptance by the group. As of a few minutes ago, he had more than 4,500 "Likes." Impressive, no? Certainly my legs and feet have never been that popular.

Some of my favorite comments were these:

Accurate representation of what my pants look like when I’m at work everyday.

Cats are sleepy and always wearing pajamas so I know personally if I have a good sleep sometimes one of my sweatpants legs is up

When you act like everything is fine, but deep inside your mind, you are distracted by your sock which is slowly sliding down your leg.

He’s still saving up for another tattoo sleeve. Leave him alone.

Accempt gangsta pants.

When you put off doing laundry too long and now you’re left with mismatched socks 🤣🤣🤣

Okay, so today I'll get back to my quilting. There are four more dresses to quilt, and I'm hopeful of getting that whole center dress section and the white border finished today. You can see in the image below that everything inside the blue line is finished.

My shoulder is feeling pretty good this morning, so I believe it's do-able. There's one housekeeping chore on the calendar, but if there's time, I might start piecing together the pieced blocks for I Believe in Snowmen. Later this afternoon, we're going wine tasting with Erik and Mae again. Seems like it's going to be a nice day. The weather has turned chilly again today, and there's even some snow in the forecast. We're not expecting it to stick, but just having it that cold is exasperating. Next week, we're forecast to hit the 70's. Won't that be nice?