A Day of Sewing with Nothing to Show

Believe me when I say this hurts me more than it does you. I've made good progress on my challenge quilt, and I'm happy with what I have so far. I want to show it to you so badly that I actually texted it to my friend Sue as a way to take the edge off. As for you...this is all you get:

It's enough to drive you mad, isn't it? And I'll say that it very nearly drove me mad until it was finished. 

Also, I took this picture last night. It relates. I can show you this without giving anything away.

It relates to this quilt back I purchased while I was up in Yakima...so there's a hint. Any ideas?

Without knowing me beyond this blog, I'm pretty sure you'll never guess in a million bazillion years. 

I'll say this: Sadie is disgusted by the condition of the sewing room. When a collage quilt is under construction, the sewing room ends up with fabric and itty bitty pieces of fusible web scattered from A to Izzard.

I use craft tweezers when I'm making a collage quilt. They help me when I'm handling the tiniest of pieces, but they're also invaluable when I'm trying to get the placement right. And here's the thing: when I'm making one of these quilts, about three-fourths of my time is spent looking for the thing I had in my hand just five seconds earlier. Which brings me to the tweezers. They disappeared after the first day. I looked all over, lifting things up, walking all around, looking at any place I might have set them down absent-mindedly. I couldn't find them anywhere. Finally, I gave up and got out a different pair. The show must go on, right?

So then, yesterday, I finished up the collage part of the quilt, which allowed me to clean up my huge mess. I was sure the tweezers would show up then. Nope. The only possibility left was that they'd fallen into the waste basket at some point, and so I took it upstairs to empty into the trash. Carefully, very carefully, I sifted through all the bits and pieces until I found them. Yay! So valuable are they that I was totally prepared to buy a new pair if I hadn't found them. 

Okay, so for all my fear about this piece, I'm happy with what I have so far. I think the most challenging part is finished. On the other hand, it will require significant thread-painting. It's something I've only done in smaller quantities, and so I'm hoping I can get it right. I needed several different values of brown thread, and so I ordered a set of browns from Connecting Threads. Supposedly they shipped on the 16th, but the USPS tells me that they have yet to receive the item. Drat! I sent an email to the company today saying, basically, WTF? I don't suppose I'll hear from them before Monday, but I'm hoping the thread will arrive soon. For now, I can add two borders and get it all sandwiched for thread-painting and quilting. After that, I'm probably stuck until the thread comes. Possibly I have some thread to get me started, so we'll see.

Our neighbor's daughter is holding an open house for our neighbor, who turned 85 this week. That means I'm baking some Cranberry-Orange Bread with Grand Marnier Glaze today. It's another old standby recipe I've been making for years. The recipe makes two large loaves or else six small ones. Here's the image from the recipe online:

I'm still on the fence whether to make one or two loaves. It isn't exactly on our diet, but it is the holiday season. A little splurge won't hurt much, right? Anyway...that's on today's agenda, and then I'll get back to my challenge quilt. I'll take it as far as I can, and then I'll get to work finishing off one of the little quilt tops...this one:

The embroidery was finished back in June, but I still need to make the quilt top. This is the picture from the pattern cover.

I have fabrics set aside to add borders, and then I'll need to make the twelve appliqued cats. 

So there's plenty on today's agenda to keep me busy. Slow-stitching is next.