Stitching Victory

Good morning, my friends! It's a sunny day here at the Three Cats Ranch. We're expecting sunshine this whole week. It will be a welcome relief from the darkness that has enveloped us for the past several days. I expect I'll be able to get outside for a walk in the next day or two. After my slip and fall last week, however, I'll wait for the pavement to dry. It's sunny, but it's cold.

My biggest news from yesterday is that I declared victory over my current nemesis project, Calendula Patterdrip's Cottage. The embroidery for the quilt is finished! Yahoo!

Here's a close-up of the section I've been working on. If you were to look closely, you might be able to see the little unstitched marks where the crows' feet are. (Please don't mistake the stitched crows' feet for the ones around my eyes. Those are easier to see.) I had the hardest time drawing them in freehand, especially after tracing them wrong to begin with. From a distance, however, and not knowing the truth, I doubt anyone will ever notice.

It'll go onto my list of quilt tops to be finished now. There is a border of pieced blocks all around the outer edge. Here's the picture from the pattern cover so you can see what I'm talking about.

It will have to wait its turn, however. There are several quilts in line ahead of it.

Well. That brought me to a stitching emergency. I needed to make up the next block for the Domestic Affairs quilt. This was a free BOM from Jenny of Elefantz back in 2016. She called her quilt "Gentle Domesticity." Now the patterns can be found for sale in her Etsy shop. Fortunately, I found my stitching cat at the ready to help me make up the next block for my stitching enjoyment.

At the mention of catnip, however, he pawsed to question his purriorities.

With some catnip under his belt, he was by my side to help me top-stitch the applique.

He purrforms his purrimary responsibilities admirably. You won't find a harder working cat, although there have been some rumblings about unionizing lately. Management has already agreed to an increase in catnip, but it seems there are other concerns among the rabble.

Well...rumblings aside, Block 5 is ready for stitching.

Now it's hooped up, and I'll take the first stitches on it when I finish here.

The rest of the day was spent on my challenge piece. It's nearing the point where I can fuse it to a background. I haven't yet selected a background fabric, but I have some good ideas. I will have the Resident Retired Engineer (RRE) assist me with that part. Here's today's peek:

I approached this piece with great trepidation, but it's going very well. There's just a little more to add to the bottom. Once it's fused to a background, I'll add some batting to the back and then get busy thread-painting. The thread-painting is only a little less scary than the ones I've done previously, and I've been reviewing what I learned in this book by Phyllis Cullen and Cindy Richard:

It's a good book with good explanations and illustrations.

So today should be a pretty easy-going day, and I should be able to have my challenge piece ready to move to the next stage by day's end. I'll be glad to clean up the mess of scraps piled everywhere on my work surface. I'm still taking breaks from the challenge piece to work on other things. Once I've cleared some space, I'd like to finish up the little quilt top I call Tucson Tabby.

It just needs some borders, and then it too will be ready for quilting. There's plenty of sewing to keep me busy today. How are things going in your part of the world?