All Caught Up

Well, doncha know I'm feeling pretty darned smug this morning, having caught up on my monthly quilts for 2022. When we arrived home, I'd not started on either of my two Rainbow Scrap projects for the year, and now I'm finished with March's blocks. (Polishes fingernails on shirt.) 

Yesterday's slow-stitching day started by stitching up February's aqua Books and Roses block. With two blocks completed, I decided to sew the borders on them next.

Meeting me in the sewing room was my brave and trusty sewing cat.

Corporal Smitty, reporting for duty, Ma'me!

At ease, Corporal. You won't be needed for this section of our sewing day.

Thank goodness. Sitting up so straight is hard for cats who are getting up in years. 

(Can you believe Smitty will be 10 years old in April? Shhhhhhhh...it upsets him to be reminded.) Who can remember when we brought this little squirt home?

Okay, so first, borders for January's red block.

And then, borders for February's aqua block.

The next thing on my sewing agenda was to finish up the March yellow blocks for the Jericho's Wall quilt. These blocks don't lend themselves well to chain piecing, and so I'm glad I'm only doing three per month.

Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt so far. Now, I'm caught up until April's color is announced.

Okay, so that brings me to "regular" status in the sewing room. I'm working at getting The Neighborhood inchies sewn into a quilt top. Here's what I decided to do with the larger motifs. I sewed together enough black felt 4 x 4 squares to accommodate the larger motif. And then I put a piece of fabric between the two to dress it up a little bit.

Same with the second motif. The edges of the fabric are pinked to match the embroidery motif. I stitched them to the felt and fabric by machine stitching right along the edge of the blanket stitched edging. You can see it if you look closely.

From there I was ready to try piecing this together into a quilt top. There are 27 of the smaller motifs, and then the two larger ones. Sizes are not uniform, and with such an odd number of pieces, I couldn't really set them in any way that was symmetrical. I messed with these for at least half an hour until my brain was broken. Eventually, I figured I'd have to fill in some gaps with fabric. This is how I left it when I was finished sewing for the day. I decided to cover it with rulers (because, you know..."mice") and return today with fresh eyes.

I think I know what to do with this now, but I'm still not sure where to start sewing. I'll get it figured out eventually, but I'm still puzzling over it a little bit.

Back upstairs, I saw one of the first squirrel sightings of spring. There are at least two squirrels running around out there now...trying to decide where to start with Mischief 2022 activities, I presume. Michief 2022 can't really get under way until the rest of their tribe wakes up.

Also hopping around nearby, this little bird. It looks like a little song sparrow, and he was digging around in the leaves...looking for seeds, I'm thinking. 

We put out black oil sunflower seeds for the birds, and so maybe that isn't to his liking. He might prefer something more the size of a flax seed. We put out flax seeds one year. The birds went crazy over it for about a week, and then never touched it again...not for years...and we finally stopped putting it out. Bummer for this guy.

Oh yes, and some happy mail arrived yesterday. This is the new backing fabric for Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs. With flying pigs!!! I think I might like this better than the chicken fabric I was planning to use originally.

And that brings me to this morning's slow stitching...March's yellow block. Now it is finished and it has its borders.

Here are the three blocks I have so far for the Books and Roses quilt.

So, I'm caught up with my sewing, and I'm caught up with my posting. Time to start my Saturday in earnest. 

I'm all out of slow-stitching projects now, and so the first item of business on my agenda is to make up Block #6 for Calendula Patterdrip's Cottage. There is some piecing involved, and so I'll have to spend some time in the sewing room before I can even begin with the tracing. After that, I'll get back to sewing the inchies together. 

It's a lovely day outside, though. I'm going to get out and enjoy the sunshine a little bit today too. The weather is too nice to spend a lot of time in my windowless basement sewing room. Time to get out and pull up some weeds. And, honestly, you snowed in people...I'm not bragging about our weather. We'll be back to the rain and gloom soon enough. Spring doesn't come this early at the Three Cats Ranch.