The Run Around

Yesterday had me traveling a big loop around the area. I had breakfast with Sue...very nice. We got asked for proof of vaccination in order to eat inside. (It was too cold, windy, and wet to consider eating outside.) It's the first time I've been asked for proof of vaccination. Fortunately, I've been carrying it with me at all times. I haven't heard that Oregon is requiring proof of vaccination, but I know King County in Washington (where Seattle is located) is requiring it. So, that was kind of interesting. We're scheduled to get our boosters on Saturday.

After that, I got my hair cut. No perming or chemicals for that, and so it was a pretty quick in and out. Then, I went grocery shopping. Then, I picked up some prescriptions. Then, home. Getting all those errands run in one fell swoop felt good. It was after 2:00 p.m. by the time I got home, which didn't leave much room for sewing.

There was still about half of the tracing to do on the next Calendula Patterdrip block, and so I finished that.

When the tracing was finished, I took it downstairs to finish prepping it for hand embroidery. My helper cat, Sadie, was Johnny on the spot to help. She's very reliable.

Smitty joined in too. Many paws make light work, you know.

It's a large block. If memory serves, it's about 23 x 31 inches. Since most of these blocks are pieced (and large), I've been backing them with muslin rather than my usual iron-on stabilizer. I had to go back to some old blog posts to remember how I did the last large block for this quilt. As it turns out, I spray basted it liberally, and then ran some basting threads in both directions to hold it all together. Now it's ready for stitching, but I'll finish off the Kitty Cat Alphabet first.

After that, I spent some time picking out fabrics from my uncut fat quarter bins. You probably have forgotten all about The Endeavourers art quilt I finished back in August. The last peek I gave you was this one:

The reveal will be November 1st, and so the cat's almost out of the bag. One more week, and I can show the whole thing. The prompts for these quilts are selected a year ahead, and we're down to the last one, which will be "Feelings." I'll be starting mine very soon. The reveals for these quilts seem to happen when we're traveling...and lately, it seems as if we're always traveling. So I have to get a head start on mine. I went round and round with different ideas for the prompt. Finally, I settled on one thing, and now I'm starting the process of making it. These are the fabrics I selected.

I won't use them all, but I'll use a lot of them. I needed lots of values of browns and blues, and I'll decide on the progression of colors as I go. Intriguing, no? Before I start that, though, I want to do my "Fun Finish" of the Get Well Kitty. That shouldn't take too long.

So the day started and ended with slow stitching. I sat and finished up this hoopful while we watched the news.

Now I've moved my hoop to the left, and I'll continue on my merry way. Only, the next few days will be less than merry. I've finally set aside three days to sandwich a dozen finished quilt tops. It occurs to me that the last time I sandwiched quilts was before I broke my shoulder. Now I'm wondering how difficult it will be for me to reach out across a large quilt to smooth it out. Time will tell. I'm not really expecting to have any problems, but I won't know until I try. My goal is to do four each day, but I can do more if I feel like it. It's my least favorite part of quilting, but it'll be nice to have all those quilt sandwiches ready to go. It's like filling up your gas tank before a long road trip. And I want to take some of the smaller ones along when we head south this winter. They'll make good take along projects to finish on the road.

So that's my day for the next several days. We're still waiting for the roofers to come back and finish the roof. No word from them yet, but it's just as well with the stormy weather we've been having. I'd hate to see one of them blown off the roof in the big winds.