Quilting with Kitties

Good Saturday morning to you, my friends. I hope you slept well last night. My morning got off to a good start yesterday. I was sitting and taking the first stitches on my newest project (The Story of My Day) when a man showed up to finish the baseboards in the basement. It's the final step toward completion. He worked all day long, but then left around 5:30 p.m. He'll be back this afternoon to finish it off. For now, the sewing room is partly disassembled. Specifically, the table where my sewing machine sits is all taken apart. Until that area is finished, I won't be able to sew. Big Bertha didn't care. She's gone for her spa treatment. I was planning to set up Pfelicity Pfaff to fill in while Big Bertha is on paid leave. Hopefully, I'll be able to do that by the end of today. Fingers crossed.

As for those first stitches...I did my usual amount of floss for a morning, but it looks as if I'm barely getting started.

There was some housework to do before I could get started on my quilting for the day. With a Man in the house, kitties were making themselves scarce. Sadie found an excellent hiding place between my quilting table and craft storage. (We actually refer to that as my "crap" storage.)

Smitty was nowhere to be found. We looked high and we looked low. Where is Smitty? Has anybody seen Smitty?

Well, I gave up on that fruitless search and went to work on my quilting. I found three sections large enough to add another sunflower.

There wasn't room for a stem here, but I added a couple of leaves for consistency in thread colors.

I could find room for one more over here:

Before I finish up today, I'm going to go back over those and circle the flower center in yellow thread, as I did on the first one I quilted several days ago.

When I scooted my chair back from that, I found my littlest quilting cat behind me.

She was there to help out, and she hopped up on the table beside me.

She first checked my tension to be sure the knob was turned to the appurropriate spot.

This was a job bigger than one small cat, and so she called in reinforcements.

SMITTY!!!!! MOM IS QUILTING AND SHE NEEDS US!!!

You don't have to yell, Sadie, I'm right here.

She needed him to check outside for bad woofies and errant Mans before she could let down her guard for the all-important pre-finish snuggleability test.

It's all clear, Sadie. You may purrceed.

Okay, so she rubbed and rolled and rolled and rubbed.

Excellent cheek appeal.

Acceptable purrogress so fur. I appurrove of this quilting. You may purrceed, but I reserve the purrogative to check it again later.

Okay, phew! That was a nail-biter. It would be a shame to do all that work and then find your quilt deficient in snuggleability.

Continuing on, I was tempted to do something in a hot pink, but I worried about bringing in yet another thread color. I decided to stick with the bright variegated thread. There were a couple of spots where I filled in another stylized flower.

From there, I had just narrow strips here and there to fill in. I started with this hooking, curving meander. I liked it enough that I decided to fill in the remainder with the same motif. I didn't want to get too close to the line drawings for fear they would get lost in the thready weeds.

When I couldn't find any more places to stitch in the quilt's interior, I took it off the machine and laid it out for a picture. It's a little hard to see, and so I've messed with the contrast and color to try bringing out the stitching a little more.

It was late in the day by then, and so I was just barely getting started on the outer border when I decided to stop.

I should be able to finish this easily today, and then it will be ready for binding. The binding strips are cut from that same multi-colored stripe I used in the stop border. Of course, I'll need for the Man to finish up in my sewing room before I can do anything. If he isn't finished today, I'll set up the sewing machine on the dining room table and finish it from there.

So getting this quilt to binding stage is today's goal. There's one housekeeping chore on the agenda, but then I'll get back to my sewing. What are you working on today?