Thread and Bread

After writing yesterday's post, I spent some time with my slow-stitching piece. Now I've moved my hoop again. I'm nearing a finish on this, and it will probably be finished before the week is over.

When I was finished with that, I went searching through my zillions of spools of thread in search of any I might use to do the thread work on my challenge piece. I came out with these.

The lightest beige-brown at the top is just slightly variegated, and it was a good choice for the lightest parts of my piece. The one to its right might be just a tad dark for my purpose, but I'll try laying it out on the piece today to see how it looks. The dark variegated at the top left is a perfect one for some of the darkest parts, and the dark brown at the top right will be used to stitch in some details. I just might have everything I need. The medium variegated is the one question mark. 

As for the blues and the rose color, those will be for the blues I've shown you. The rose is for a detail I cannot disclose without giving something away. You'll have to trust me when I say it's exactly the color I need.

So my next task was to add borders and sandwich this for quilting. I've done some reading that advised me to use some iron-on stabilizer on the back of the main part, which should make the thread painting go more smoothly. Then I added two borders. I'm only showing you just a bit of the inner blue border on the right and bottom of the image below.

Also, I added a little more blue color to the blue piece on the lower left corner. I can't show you the outer border since that would give too much away. I added the batting, but not the back. I want to do the thread painting before adding the back, but I'll add it before I start quilting the outer edges and the borders.

Then, I gulped hard and went to work thread painting the lightest parts.

Then, I added in some details with the dark brown thread.

This piece will require lots of thread changes as I go, even though I'm not using very many colors. Some of the details need to be added before the thread paint, and some after. I'll have to be patient as I go. And "patience" is a good watchword for this piece. I found myself kind of hyped up and feeling hurried as I went. I think it was just the adrenaline rush of trying something new and wanting to get it right. I was feeling pressured, and I didn't want to work that way, so I called it quits after stitching about a third of it. I'll go back to it today. As I told my friend Wendy, the prompt for this piece is "feelings/emotions," and I've selected something very special to me. I want to do a good job on it.

Instead of pushing through, I went upstairs and had some lunch with my cat. He's a very good listener when one is speaking from jangled nerves.

Then, I did some housework and crossed off a few more to-do's on my list. It was a relaxing afternoon. 

For dinner, I tried something new. I had some chunked up butternut squash in my freezer from another dish, and I wanted to use it. Enter this recipe for Butternut Squash Braids. It also used a pound of Italian sausage. Recently, we went in on a pork share with our son and daughter-in-law, and so I'm looking for ways to use that stuff too. Our half of the share included two pounds of Italian sausage. And these were very tasty...and filling! We each could eat only half of one. With all the veggies, sausage, and puff pastry, it's a one dish meal.

This was actually much easier than it looks. If you don't believe me, then take a look at this helpful video. (Sorry about the Walmart ad.) If you can't see the video, then click right here.

Okay, and so I put off baking the Cranberry-Orange Bread with Grand Marnier Glaze until this morning. I wanted it to be same-day baked when I hand it to my neighbor atthe open house this afternoon.

I've already done my slow stitching this morning, and so the next thing on my list is to get back to the challenge piece. Another reason I quit yesterday was because I was ready to start the scariest part of the thread-painting. Hopefully, I can approach it with a relaxed mind and smooth movements. Fingers crossed.