Home Stretch

It was early afternoon yesterday before I was able to get much sewing done. Despite the delays, I was able to get farther along than I'd hoped. For this, I needed my trusty feline sentry, guarding the top of the stairs from any intruders who might like to slow my purrogress. He put on his most stern face to let any encroachers know he meant business.

Would you cross him? I thought not.

At my sewing machine, I started out by stitching a snowflake in the middle of this free-standing star.

And then I went to work quilting blowing wind across the bottom panel. (If you've ever tried to envision "blowing wind," then wonder no more.)

I was only able to get one windy line stitched before we needed to head into town to run some errands. I finished up when we came back. 

From there, I stitched the top panel, but then neglected to take a picture. (It's hard to take very good pictures without taking the quilt off the machine.)

From there, I stitched some candy cane stripes into the narrow white border.

I wish I could have been a little more consistent with my stripes, but there you go. Finished is better than perfect, and it's good enough.

From there, I did some dot-to-dot quilting on the inner pieced border. That went fairly well. My bobbin thread was running low, and I started getting breakage of the bobbin thread. Since I was working with monofilament, I didn't want to try unwrapping it and starting fresh. It ends up turning into a tangled mess, and so I just crossed my fingers and endeavored to finish it off. I was able to reach the final corner before I needed to wind a fresh bobbin.

By then, I was ready to quilt the outer border. I'm starting with a full bobbin, and it's all stitching perfectly. I should be able to round the remainder of the outer border, and then the quilt will be ready for binding. Yay! It's pretty hard to see the quilting here. I'm stitching a big feather all the way around.

On the slow stitching front, I finished February's block for the Joyful Journey quilt.

Here are the two blocks I have for this quilt so far.

And did you know? It's National Cat Day. It's time to show your furry feline friends a little respect. Extra treats on a day like today are always appurreciated.

So today I'm hoping to get the Snowmen to binding stage. The binding strips are located and cut. I should have plenty of time to get it sewn on by machine. It's good timing because it will give me something to do for slow-stitching while I wait for the sewing room to be put back in order.

Regarding the basement, things are looking up. They came back yesterday, as promised, and removed all the newly painted baseboards to the outdoors. Mike spent some time tidying up downstairs. There were lots of nails lying around, and he vacuumed all that up to ensure it didn't end up under our new carpeting. The carpeting will be laid on Monday, and then we're promised a crew will return Tuesday to finish replacing the baseboards and doors, and then they'll move the furniture back inside. I'm not sure if all that can be accomplished in a single day, but we're getting there. After seven long months, I think this nightmare will be coming to an end. And, again, the most I can do is cross my fingers and hope for the best. Maybe if we all cross our fingers and hope for the best, we can make it happen.