Sonora Slow

Yesterday's slow-stitching time went to finishing up the rays of the sun on the Sonora Desert quilt. When the slow-stitching was finished, it looked like this. 

It's hard to see the detail in a photograph, and so I took another photo from an angle to show the texture.

From there, it was time for a binding. I chose a hand-dyed fabric purchased from Vicki Welsh quite some time ago. Originally, I planned to do this quilt using several of Vicki's fabrics, and then they sat in a box literally for years. This one is the only one used in this quilt. The rest will get used in another way.

I liked how this fabric had the same colors seen in the quilt, and I adjusted the full length so that the blue portion would end up at the top corner near the sky.

And then just the hand-sewing was left. That took about an hour, and the quilt was finished.

Here's how it looks from the back.

There is no plan for this finish...it was just a challenge and an experiment. I'll hang it in my sewing room somewhere. When I took it downstairs, I was motivated to clean things up a little. There were some curtain rod rings on order so that I could hang the farm quilt in the sewing room. My sewing work table is a ping pong table. The table is naturally divided into quadrants. I use two of those as work space and cutting areas. One area holds a lightbox, and that's where I do most of my tracing for embroidery and applique. The final quadrant had a bunch of stuff piled there...future ideas and future projects. It's where I pile things I want to circle and think about for a while.

The farm quilt was too long to hang in the spot I wanted it, and so I switched Wind in the Whiskers (smaller and shorter) to that spot. That meant first clearing off the stack of finished quilt tops awaiting their turn on the sandwiching table. Now the new project idea stuff has been relocated to the top of my mother's hope chest there (the sliver at the bottom of the image).

And then I had space to hang the farm quilt where it had more room at the bottom. This spot in my sewing room has an ugly plumbing access panel hidden behind the quilt. These are the two spots in my sewing room where there is room to hang large quilts, and I switch them out from time to time.

My next project will be to find space on the wall for the Sonora Desert quilt.

After dinner last night we looked outside to find a deer dining on the weeds. Farther to the left and outside the frame of this image, there was another one. I'm happy to see the deer in our field. Just stay out of the garden, wouldja? No way they'll get in there. The fence is 8 feet high, and so they aren't jumping that puppy.

Speaking of critters in the garden, I shared yesterday that a pesky gopher was chewing the roots off of things below ground. It was discouraging to check in on the garden only to find some new plant had been chewed off at the roots, and was lying dead on the ground. This happened with four of the green bean plants, two of the beet plants, and one of the corn stalks. When I lost two more green beans to the gopher, I dug down and found his tunnel. Mike set a trap. Yesterday, we caught that little rat bastard. I didn't actually see him, but Mike said he was a fat one. He won't be dining on my vegetables any more.

Okay, and I did one more thing yesterday. I baked this lovely thing. I'm not supposed to show you this project, and so I'm not saying anything more about it except that it was very tasty. And, just pretend you didn't see this. 

Mum's the word. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Okay, so I have a couple of indoor and outdoor chores on today's list, but then I'll get back to just some regular piecing with the next block for Ties & Tails.

The next block will be the cat on the right side of the middle row...only, I made the first two sitting cats facing the wrong direction, so I'll make this one in the opposite direction too. I hope that makes sense.

All right...time for breakfast and some slow stitching. I'm very close to finishing up the Calendula Patterdrip block. It might get finished this morning.