A Day of Rest

Sadie held my place at the quilting machine yesterday while I gave my hurting wrist a rest.

There was still plenty to do even without adding any more quilting to the Garden Sunshine quilt. I spent some extra time on January's Joyful Journey block. It's about halfway finished now.

While I was doing that, the kitties were sharing the space near my feet for their morning naps. (Kitties take a lot of naps.)

Later we all went outside to check on the peonies. With so much rain, it's been hard to keep up with the grass. It's grown to about knee height now, and the kitties are appreciating of the lush lawn for their dining pleasure.

Smitty, there's some good weed over here!

Sadie, Sadie, Sadie...I've taught you everything I know, and you still don't know anything. The best weed is over here on this west-facing slope.

Where is it, Smitty?

Here, Sadie. You must stand propurrly...no paws on the table.

Okay, now sniff...it's impurrtant to savor the furragrance furrst, then chomp in a lively manner.

I left them enjoying their snacks, and walked around to the front of the house where the dark purple rhododendron is in full bloom. It's the last of the rhodies to bloom.

Back inside, and with quilting off my to-do list, I focused all my attention on finishing off the next Calendula Patterdrip section(s). My current slow-stitching project won't last long, and so I wanted to have this one ready to go. I still needed to make four flying geese units.

Then one more pinwheel...

and a churn dash. Yes, as a matter of fact, I did fudge on the fabric in the lower right corner. It's a sore subject. Let's just not talk about it, okay?

I'm hoping that turning it in this orientation will make it less obvious. Then, I sewed everything together to make the background for Section 8.

After that, I sewed Sections 7 and 8 together, and my background was complete. That didn't take long, did it? Only several days, but who's counting?

The embroidery motif for this one is so large, it had to be spread out, trimmed, and then taped together.

Then, I pinned it to my background piece and took it upstairs to the big dining room table for tracing.

When it was finished, I still needed to add a muslin backing to it. Sadie was my helper cat for that, checking the piece for snuggleability first.

As I worked, I thought we might be gearing up for a rumble. I brought a larger kitty bed from upstairs down to the sewing room, hoping it would entice kitties to nap rather than help me as much as they do. A cat can get tired working so hard, you know. Sadie was the first to notice, but Smitty thought he might actually be the rightful owner of this space.

While they sorted out the seating arrangement, I continued on, cutting a piece of muslin to size, and then smoothing the embroidery background over it. Ordinarily, I use iron on stabilizer, but these pieces are too large for that. I've been using muslin for this quilt.

The use of muslin requires spray baste, in my way of doing things. My spray baste of choice is usually 505. When I use that, I'm doing it in the garage with the doors open. The stuff isn't good to inhale, and it's flammable. I don't really want to be using it in my enclosed, windowless sewing room, especially since it's also a utility room where the pilot lights for the furnace and water heater are burning. So, when I'm doing this inside the house, and in the sewing room, I prefer this product.

It's less toxic and non-flammable. It also costs more, which is why I don't use it all the time. Also, it has a more precise spray pattern so that I'm not getting spray-on goo all over everything. And so I sprayed and smoothed and realigned until it was ready for stitching. And with a piece this size, I ran several lines of basting stitches across it about every six inches or so. I just used the longest stitch on my sewing machine...about 6 stitches per inch.

And now, that's ready for stitching. It's always a relief to know I've fended off yet another stitching emergency.

So my wrists are better today, and I believe I can safely get back to my quilting. I might keep a splint on my left wrist, just to be sure. I'll be quilting the last row of quilt blocks on the Garden Sunshine quilt. And then, if there's still time in the day, I'll start sewing together the quilt blocks for the French Roses quilt. 

I have a pile of errands to run this week including a trip to the grocery store and to the post office. Mike is driving into town today, and so I'll probably ride along with him and take care of those two things. There will be more tomorrow, and so it'll be good to cross a couple of items off the list I've created for myself. 

It's looking like a pretty good day of weather. I'm hoping we'll get some more action from the peonies today. Time will tell.