Change of Plans

Yeah...I know I said I wasn't going to be blogging this morning, but here I am. We moved our trek to Yakima out one day. Mike forgot he had a haircut appointment scheduled for today. His hair-cutter guy is so booked up that it takes weeks for him to get an appointment. If he doesn't get his hair cut today, he won't be able to get one until we return from our winter trip. So, we rescheduled with the Yakima folks and we'll head out tomorrow morning.

No problem for me. I really wanted one more day to work on my quilt. I think I'll be able to finish it off today. Yesterday's quilting travels had me finishing off the horizontal sashings and cornerstones.

From there, I moved on to the inner border. I'm adapting one of Leah Day's designs. She calls it "Wheat in the Wind." It's just three lines of graduated lengths, and then traveling across to the opposite side to start the next one. I was just getting started, and I'd quilted up to where the yellow arrow is when the laundry called out for the old switcheroo between the washer and dryer. So I walked away, changing nothing.

When I came back, I quilted the next couple of motifs, and then checked the back. Holy moley! My tension was all messed up on the newest motifs. It started out fine, and then, seemingly by magic, it was all messed up. It seems I'd gotten the top thread wrapped around the tension spring somehow. It was a quick fix. I'm just glad I checked before quilting across the whole border. When it was finished, it looked like this:

And poor Smitty. He so dearly wants to lie on the quilt near me while I work. I'm going to be quilting the outer border today, which means the quilt will only be on half the table. I'm going to try giving him his own bed on the open side and see if we can work out a compurromise.

So here's a little peek at the back.

Now, let's just talk about that outer border. I want to try quilting wheat stalks there. I've done some perusing online and come up with a couple of examples I might be able to master. They're really just feathers with a "whisker" at the end.

This one is machine embroidery. I found it on Pinterest, but you can see how one could quilt the outlines of this like a feather. All I need to do is make them a tear-drop shape and extend the point out a little. 

So, I flipped the quilt back over the excess batting and gave that a try. I think it has potential!

I need to get the "grains" a little closer together, but otherwise, this is looking do-able for this can't-draw-to-save-my-life quilter. I'll spend a little more time on a practice piece, and then I'll commit it to the outer border. With a little luck, I can finish the quilting today. If I'm really lucky, I might even get the binding sewn on. I'd like to take it with me to Yakima to get a start on the hand-sewing.

And, honestly, if I can't get the binding ready to go, I'm going to have to spend some time tracing out a new stitchery. Goodness knows, I don't want to have a stitching emergency while on the road. Yesterday, I finished off this section of the latest Heartland Barn block. (This must be my week for barns.)

Now I've moved my hoop down, and I've encompassed the rest of it. I have no doubt I'll finish it off this morning.

Okay, so there's much to do today on the stitching front, and just a little packing to do for our trip to Yakima tomorrow. Don't look for me to blog again until Sunday. And this time, I really mean it!