Progress on Three Projects

We were so quick getting our vaccine boosters yesterday, we were back home by 10:30 a.m., which left lots of time in the day for sewing. Optimistically, I'd left the afternoon open for stuff that was more fun than jabs in the arm and grocery shopping. There wasn't time for slow-stitching before we left, and so I did that first when we arrived home.

I filled in my hoop, and then moved it to the next position...which happens to be the last position. Yay! I'm ready to be working on something else.

 

After that, I went to work quilting the Charm Stars quilt. I'm working on the open areas between the stars, and I had a plan. It involves quilting partial motifs to stitch them while simultaneously ending up at the starting point for the next one. I'm trying to avoid cutting thread as much as I can. It's too confusing to try to explain in words, but I started at the edge of the quilt. There, I was quilting in the centers of some flying geese. You might call this a four-petal flower. For the flying geese sections, there is just one petal.

From there, I stitched along the quilt's edge until I came to a spot where I could start stitching across horizontal rows. Here, I've stitched all four petals in the open area between points of the differently colored stars.

It's a little hard to see the quilting in these pictures, but if you look to the right and left, above and below the red star, I think you can make out the four-petal flowers.

Here's another shot from a different angle.

And here's how it looks from the back. It's very hard to pick out the quilting on the back. I've messed with the color and contrast to try to bring out the stitching detail. And I feel a need to say again this backing fabric is one of the oldest fabrics in my stash. I'm happy to be able to use it for something.

It was pretty quick and easy to quilt across these first rows. I'm letting my shoulder decide how much quilting is prudent, though, and so I stopped there for the day. My shoulder feels fine today, and so I might be able to knock off another two rows today.

In the sewing room, I was still working to sew together the Blackwork Baskets blocks. After receiving so much design input from a certain little black cat the day before...

I'd left the blocks on the floor and covered them with my cutting mat and a ruler to protect them. Still, she managed to have her say about this layout. She's persistent. I'll give her that.

Okay, so I had one more color block to add in the lower right.

From there I could finish off all the blocks and setting triangles.

And then it was time to sew them together. 

You might notice I changed the orientation of the color blocks. That's because I sewed the first one together going in the wrong direction. But no matter...this quilt is square. I guess I can sew them together however I want. They'll be oriented in a different direction, depending on where you are standing. At this point it's 39 x 39 inches. I expect it to be somewhere in the 51-inch range when it's finished.

The quilt top still needs two borders. The plan is to add a 2-1/2 inch black border next, and then I'll use that same batik for a 5-1/2-inch outer border. When those are finished...today, hopefully...I'll have a finished quilt top.

Back upstairs, I stitched the last of the Calendula Patterdrip block while we watched the news. And that's a wrap.

There are still pieced blocks to be sewn to the top and bottom. That's what I'll do first today. I started this block back on March 13th, and so I was able to get it finished up pretty quickly, despite its large size. Nevertheless, I'm more than ready to be moving on to something else. The last panel for Heartland Barns is hooped up and ready for stitching.

I'll take the first stitches on that one this morning. Also, it's time to make up the next block for the Books & Roses quilt. Here are the three blocks I have for this quilt so far.

This is one of my projects for the 2022 Rainbow Scrap Project, and so the next one will be done in April's pink.

Also for the 2022 RSC, I'm making Jericho's Wall quilt blocks. I have nine blocks so far.

I'll be making three more pink blocks to go with these as well.

So you can see there's plenty to do on the sewing front. There's one little housekeeping chore to do today, but otherwise, I'll spend the day sewing.

I'm feeling okay after my vaccine yesterday, although I think I might be a little more achy than usual. Mike was feeling rather poorly last night, but he's fine today. I'm just happy to have it done. We got our shots at a pharmacy inside a grocery store, and so our grocery shopping is finished now too. We can get through the weekend and into next week before we need to go again. Sounds like sewing will be my refuge for the next couple of days.

We're still waiting for the weather to warm up a little. If the forecast is to be believed, we'll be in the high 60's later on this week. The weeds will have to wait until then.

And happy birthday to our Matthew! The picture for this quilt was taken 38 years ago today. Sheesh. Time sure flies.

Okay...time to go enjoy the weekend. I hope y'all have a good one planned for yourselves.