Plenty of Sewing

Good morning, my friends. It was a more energetic day yesterday. I must have needed a day to chill before I could get back up to speed. Yesterday morning saw me taking the first stitches on Bernie Sanders and his mittens. I'm going to use some different colors on the mittens. Since I had a snip of red floss loose in my project box, I went ahead and stitched it onto the piece to get it out of my way. I haven't decided yet just how I'm going to use the different colors I've selected. Also, I can see that I need to take a look at his right eye and try to open it up some with some careful couching.

When it was time to move into the sewing room, Smitty was there at attention. He missed sewing the day before. Mostly he missed the catnip treat that is served up when he helps out.

I finished off three more Shop Hop blocks. In yesterday's post, I shared the reasons for choosing these fabrics to represent the shops. Today, I'll link to the posts I wrote about them. You can find my post about the Patchwork Pig right here. This was a big shop with lots of pretty fabrics.

There was no post about this next one, but I did write a post about our visit to the lake that year that mentions the quilt shop. You can take a little look around inside while you're there. 

Finally, you can read about this shop in Montrose, Colorado, right here.

When all the blocks are made, there will be 25 in all. So far, I have 18 finished. I started making them three at a time just to move this quilt along. I'm already collecting fabrics for my next Shop Hop quilt, and so I need to get this one finished.

Yesterday, I realized I'd made some of the blocks wrong, and that was discouraging. If you look at the images below, you can see there are gray strips sewn to the right and left side. One strip is wider than the other. I've made most of the blocks with the wider strip on the left side like this one:

During the last two go-rounds, I've reversed them like the one below. 

I'm going to have to fix them. It's not a major fix, just time consuming. As I've been thinking about this, I've decided to sort out the ones that are sewn wrong and repair one or two each sewing day. They'll get fixed, and it won't be too much of a burden to make them right.

When those were finished, I went to work on the next Vintage Linen block. This will be Block 8 of the nine I need. The time went faster than expected. When I looked at the clock, it was time to start dinner. I still have a couple of rounds to get this to the right size. It was hard to decide how to cut the center block to make it a pentagon shape. It seemed oddly cut at first, but as I added strips, it started looking right.

I'm kind of excited to get these finished because I have a good idea about how to set the blocks. It should be pretty if I can make it will work.

So I'll continue on with my sewing today. The forecast keeps telling us it will be very cold, and we're expecting a little snow this afternoon. So far, not much is happening weather-wise. Originally, we'd planned a camping trip starting today, but then rescheduled it for after the first of the year. Getting off the mountain in the snow is always a problem, but we were more worried about getting back home at the end of the week, when temperatures will be coldest.

I'd say I'm looking forward to an NBS day, but there is a little housework on the agenda. Maybe I'll just say it's going to be a POS day (Plenty of Sewing). It's a POS day for another reason though (referring to the "Men in Black" translation of POS). There is something weighing heavily on my mind. There is a problem I wish I could solve, but realistically I can do nothing about. It's not something I want to write about in this public forum, but it is dragging me down. It would be nice if I could just stop thinking about it. Sewing helps, but it doesn't stop my busy brain from carrying on looking for solutions to the unsolvable. Music turned up loud should help. Getting out for a walk would help too, but the weather isn't going to cooperate today. Chin up, I tell myself. Things have a way of working themselves out in time.