Road Apples

The weather never really improved much yesterday. It was okay because it gave me a good excuse to stay inside and sew all day. Smitty was my over-the-shoulder snoopervisor while I stitched the day's inchy. He had a good view of any bird activity from this vantage point as well.

The day's inchy was pretty straight-forward. This one was personalized. I kind of see a human face in this one:

From there, I had just a little bit left to stitch to finish off this seventh of the blackwork baskets.

Here are all the baskets I have so far:

It was time to make up the eighth one for stitching. I'm thinking ahead to next week when we'll be in Death Valley National Park for a week. We'll be "dry camping," which means we won't have any hook-ups. We're all set to run on our batteries and recharge as necessary via our roof solar panels and our generator. Nevertheless, ironing takes a lot of juice. It's best if I don't turn on the iron. Since these are all backed with an iron-on stabilizer, it made sense to make up the final two. Now, if I finish the eighth one while we're there...

the ninth one will be ready to go.

While I was doing that, Sadie was in morning sun-worshipping mode. They don't have the morning sun on their hammocks here, but they have plenty of places toward the rear of the RV where they can bask in the morning sun. I like the rim lighting on her fur.

Okay, so the wind was still howling outside. I decided a sewing day was in order. I went to work on the little apple mini quilt. I had sorted out scraps for this, but they needed cutting.

And then I pieced together the first apple...

and then the apple core.

And it didn't take long before I was able to sew it into a quilt top. It ends up at 10 x 13 inches.

Pretty cute and fun to make. I was a thorough packer for this project. I brought along batting and a backing fabric. I won this fabric in a giveaway some years back. It was a part of a fat quarter bundle.

I neglected to bring along any spray baste, but no problem. I just used hairspray.

And, quick as a wink, I had it sandwiched for quilting.

I even brought along a length of binding from my binding scrap bag. One assumes this is long enough to finish off the quilt. If you like this pattern, you can find it free at Sassafras Lane Designs.

Sadie was my excellent sewing cat yesterday afternoon, but eventually, she snoozed under the bird feeders. A cat can only do so much in a single day.

Today is a grocery shopping day. It won't take all day, and so the afternoon is unplanned at this point. The wind has died down for now, and I'm hoping it won't come back with the sunrise. As for my sewing projects, I was thinking I'd go to work quilting the apple quilt. On the other hand, the iron is still an issue if I want to piece together this little single mini snowflake I mentioned in yesterday's post.

This is a free pattern from Lake Girl Quilts. Without looking at what I brought along, I can't remember if I packed as thoroughly as I did for the apple quilt. Either way, it makes sense to me to do the piecing on this before we head off for Death Valley since I'll want the iron again for piecing. I can quilt without ironing. So that will probably be the next thing I do on the sewing front. Having spent the whole day sewing yesterday, I'll probably do something else today. I just don't know what it will be...maybe I'll bake something. Yeah...baking. It'll be a good way to reward us for our grocery shopping efforts.

Okay, so I imagine the day's inchy has been posted. I'll get to that next. First...breakfast. That morning cup of coffee only gets me so far.