More Quilting Practice

 Hello, my friends. Today might be the only day in two weeks that rain isn't falling. While we were doing our grocery shopping yesterday, the sky opened up and poured for several minutes. When you're in a huge grocery store and you can hear rain on the roof, you know it's coming down hard. We happened to be standing next to the garden section, and so we could see outside. It seemed to be coming down in a steady stream, as if from a fire hose. Sheesh. Fortunately, that all happened while we were inside, and we could walk to and from the store without getting wet. Luck seemed to be with us. We should have bought a lottery ticket while we were there. What would you do with a billion dollars? I might buy a quilt shop. Heck...I might by all the quilt shops.

Before heading out to do our shopping, I spent some time working on the April block for Joyful Journey. I'm making slow progress on this. The leaves are stitched in a "fishbone" stitch, and each one takes at least ten minutes. I get tired of stitching them, but now I've done all the black parts. Only leaves are left in this section.

When we arrived home from the grocery store, it was well past lunch time. We both had lunch and naps, and then I went to work quilting more blocks on the Waste Not Whatnots quilt. Smitty was my excellent helper.

He's always there to make sure I don't move the quilt too fast under the needle. His paws force me to pause. Oh my gosh...I'm pretty punny for so early in the morning.

Also, he uses the control panel to scratch his chin and cheeks. We've learned the control panel and our iPads are excellent for kitty face scratching.

Getting on with the quilting, I'm sticking with this BFUD motif in these little one-inch squares. (That's, backsy-forthsy-upsy-downsy, if you missed yesterday's post).

So far, I've skipped over some of the sections that had short strips in them. I probably won't quilt all of them. For this one, I treated it like three different borders, using motifs I might use in any border.

Here, I did more dot-to-dot quilting. This block is a little strange. In the upper left and lower right corners, I believe I must have sewn two different sizes of triangles together. The points don't meet at the edges. It was hard to decide where to change direction. This quilt is just for practice, but I still might redo this block. It's a little messy.

For this friendship star, I was trying a swirling feather with a little hook at the end. It worked out okay, but it needed more thread, and so I did those big swoopy things.

Here, more insy-outsy-upsy-downsy and then a looping motif around the outer edge. I'm realizing that a lot of these quilt blocks were leftovers from the Tiny Tuesday quilt.

This one didn't turn out like I envisioned it at all, but it was still good practice.

There are some tiny blocks next to some of the larger ones. I'm treating them as if they are part of the larger block in places. Here, I treated them as one block.

I was getting tired of sewing by that time. There are just a few more blocks to finish up today. When the blocks are finished, I'll move to the black sashings to do some fancier stuff. I'll have to work up my courage again. If there's time, I'll get to work recovering the pillow from the RV mentioned in yesterday's post. I've selected a fabric from my flannel scraps, and I'm ready to do some cutting. I'll say more about it when I get started.

If the sun shows itself, I might get out for a walk this morning. It might be the only chance I'll get for a while. I can't recall so much heavy rain this time of year, but then, we usually head south. Or maybe I say the same thing every year. In any case, the wet and dark is beginning to feel oppressive. We're warm and dry, and that's what counts. I hope you're staying warm and dry too.