Charmed, I'm Sure

After spending the previous two days in the kitchen, I gave myself some extra time for slow-stitching yesterday. It gave me time to fill my hoop again. I'm making good progress on this piece, and I'm hoping to have it finished before the end of the week.

Probably, I should be getting ready with my next embroidery project, which would be the large center panel for Heartland Barns. These are the four smaller blocks. The center panel isn't really much larger than the ones I've stitched so far, but it is on a larger canvas. 

When I headed upstairs to get dressed, I found Smitty waiting for me. He knew we were going to be starting on a quilting project today, and he was there, ready to help out.

To satisfy him, temporarily at least, I decided to get a start on the first star's quilting. I'd seen a motif on Pinterest that I thought I could do...this one:

It wasn't exactly right for my stars. The star above is made with a large center square, smaller corner squares, and flying geese all around. My stars are intended to be used with charm pack sized fabric squares, and all in half-square triangles. It meant that the center ovals would have to cross a seam. That didn't bother me. It was a bit of a puzzle figuring out which directions to stitch, but I got it done. I'm liking how this looks.

It looks pretty from the back too:

Okay, and then I did another one while it was still fresh in my mind.

Here's how that looks from the back:

So, I was feeling pretty confident by then, although I had to re-figure the stitching directions with every block. Nevertheless, I decided to take a break then and get dressed, and enjoy the sunshine a little bit. It wasn't terribly sunny, but it wasn't raining either. 

The star magnolia is beginning to bloom now, and I wanted to get a picture of the flower before the rain had a chance to bruise its petals.

A friend posted a blooming trillium to Instagram yesterday, and that motivated me to check our woods to see if ours were blooming. Along the way, I noticed the flowering red currant (an Oregon native) was very close to blooming. We are very lucky to have this growing wild at the edge of our woods.

Walking into the woods a little ways, I noticed quite a few wildflowers blooming. I believe these next ones are a type of wild violet.

And, yes! Yay! The trilliums are blooming! It's my favorite Pacific Northwest wildflower!

This is another type of wild violet. We can find these on Mt. Rainier when the wildflowers bloom there.

Back up nearer the house, I noticed the Bleeding Heart has made an appearance. It even has flowers forming.

Okay, but it was time to get back to my quilting. The Charm Stars are set four stars to a row, and five rows, for 20 stars total. My goal for the day was to stitch a whole row, and then decide whether to keep going. Somehow, I got off in my "row" and started stitching them diagonally. I had the quilt turned funny. So I ended up doing 6 stars before quitting for the day. This ones I've done are X'd out in the image below.

Today, I'll just keep going, stitching at least an entire row, and maybe a few more. With those two partial rows at the top, I could stitch six more stars and have the quilt more than halfway finished. I'd like to have the quilt all finished before the end of the week. We'll see how it goes. 

Now here's something: Do you ever feel as if you're being watched? Just now I looked overhead at the hutch over my desk, and this is what I saw.

I wonder who will be my helper cat today? The weather is looking at least a little nicer this morning. There are still weeds to be pulled, but I'm waiting for a nice day when I can be out in the sunshine. Any chance to pick up some Vitamin D, you know. With the possible exception of weeding, it's going to be an NBQ day today...nothing but quilting.