All Quilting All the Time

Good morning, my friends. Good grief. It might actually be time to build an ark. It has been raining hard here for weeks! My ark will only have room for kitties. We certainly don't want to sail off into epic floodwaters with a pack of howling and barking woofies making a huge racket. No. Kitties have very strict requirements for their ark. At the top of the list is plenty of treats. And, I might point out, kitties know exactly what to do on a rainy day. Sleep, of course.

And the cozier, the better.

It came down in buckets yesterday. For as much rain as we're getting here, I know you folks in California have it worse. It seems we chose a good year to stay home, because I'm afraid we'd be right in the thick of it. At least here, the house stays still when the wind blows hard.

So, it was an excellent day to sit in Eliza's chair and do lots of quilting. Although I've been dragging my feet on this quilt, I think the quilting bug bit me yesterday. In the larger areas of black sashing, I'm wanting to try some new little things. It seemed a good idea to start with something like that right away, before my patience and courage ran out. I started with this YLI rust colored thread.

A long time ago, I won some YLI thread in a giveaway or a contest or something. I forget. It works pretty well in my machine. This is a 40-weight thread.

I used a hera marker and the bottom end of a thread cone to draw a circle on my fabric, and then stitched this little thing.

I might have gotten it more round, but it won't matter. Free motion quilting is very forgiving. You'll see in a minute.

From there, I switched to this variegated yellow. I have three spools of this thread, all nearly used up. I think I used it in a baby quilt one time.

It's a 30-weight Sulky thread. All along the way I was checking my tension, and it stayed remarkably consistent despite using different thread weights.

With that, I stitched some petals to make a sunflower.

Okay, but I wasn't finished. I switched off to this green.

My quilting fairy godmother, Ila, sent me a whole box of different colors of Aurifil a while back. Thank you, Ila. This was just one of the many colors she sent. This is a 50 weight thread.

With that, I stitched some stems and leaves, and my sunflower was complete. Ta-Da!

Okay, well that nearly gave me heart palpitations. I'm terrible at drawing, and so doing something like this freehand is an act of heroism. It's my understanding that we're fresh out of "Heroic Quilting" medals. Bummer.

Well, that was about all I could take in courageous quilting for the day. Next, I moved onto something less scary. I switched back to the pastel variegated thread...

and continued on quilting more of the blocks. Starting with this leftover bit of a strip set, I stitched terry twists.

For this, I only stitched the interior seams to maintain that little flower shape. It reminds me of plumeria.

Next, I used the same flower motif I used when I quilted Ella's Flower Garden. This is a pretty simple motif.

It's hard to see in the image above, but there are leaves stitched into the corners of the block.

From there, I went back to doing some dot-to-dot quilting. Most of the blocks on this quilt will be done dot-to-dot. Most of them are made from bonus triangles, and that kind of quilting really works the best.

In this little nine patch grid, I did some backsy-forthsy-upsy-downsy stuff. (These are technical quilting terms. Try to keep up.) The little squares on this block are about one inch.

Here I did a combination of dot-to-dot, and in the middle, a swirling feather. I tried to bring out more contrast to make it easier to see, but this is the best I could do. Think of two flattened S's criss-crossing in the middle with feathers extending out on both sides. I know. Clear as mud.

This little wonky log cabin was left over from when I made the Tiny Tuesday quilt. I stitched a wonky square spiral in the center, and then the paperclip motif around the outer edge.

Here, I did some curling leaves and spirals. It's a little like McTavishing, but not exactly.

Then, more dot-to-dot with a little bit of Backsy-Forthsy-Upsy-Downsy (known from here on as BFUD) in the center.

I was getting tired by then. For this larger pinwheel, I did my heart-shaped swirls again.

It was getting late in the day by then, and I was getting tired of sewing. My right thumb that was broken a little more than two years ago, has healed nicely. Better than I'd hoped for, actually. It had a huge lump at the first joint that has decreased in size over time. For the first six months or so after I broke it, it hurt like a mother at times. It rarely bothers me now, but spreading my hands wide for quilting bothers me after several hours of sewing. It seemed a good time to stop.

Today we can put off our grocery shopping no longer. Mother Hubbard's cupboard is bare. I don't generally like grocery shopping on a Monday because the shelves are being restocked. Sometimes we find the shelves empty of the things we're looking for. Oh well. These are first world problems. We'll wait until a little later this morning to give the shelf-stocking people time to clear out. I believe there might be one housekeeping chore on the calendar for today too. And all of that to say that I'll probably have some time for quilting today, but maybe not.

Also, I remembered I have a pillow I need to recover. It's a small pillow I use for back support in the RV, and I didn't have it with me this last trip. I used a rolled up towel instead, but the pillow works best. I'm not much into pillow-making, but I found a good tutorial to follow. It'll be another way to use up some of my flannel scraps.

So there's plenty on today's agenda. If I'm going to get any more quilting done, I'd better get going on the rest of my day. I hope you're all staying warm and dry, and to my California readers: Please be careful out there. No swimming in the floodwaters is allowed.