Elves Invade the Sewing Room

Happy Hump Day, my friends! It's going to be a busy day today, and so I have to write fast. My monthly pedicure is this morning. After that, there's grocery shopping to do. I'm hoping I'll have some time for sewing, but there's no telling at this point.

Yesterday morning, I stitched enough to move my hoop to the next position. I'm coming to a finish on this piece.

It was time to don my gay workout apparel, but I paused to watch the snow falling outside. As I gazed out the window, this guy showed up. He and his brethren had better stay out of the greenhouse this year, or there's going to be some serious trouble.

He is kinda cute though, isn't he?

Before getting ready to walk, I decided to head into the sewing room and collect the names and places of the final four quilt shops for the Shop Hop quilt. Strangely, they were already typed out. I don't remember doing that, but apparently somebody did. Could it be elves?

All I needed to do was to trace them for stitching. Now they're ready to go, and I'll take them along on our camping trip next week.

But that won't be enough to keep me busy...especially if it rains the whole time, as we're expecting. So, it seemed like as good a time as any to trace May's block for the Joyful Journey quilt. Only, when I opened the project box, I found it already traced and ready to go! Well, f*ck a duck! Now, I'm sure there are elves in the sewing room.

It's a little hard to see there, but this is the picture of the pattern cover.

Checking back on old blog posts, I realized I'd traced out two projects for our previous camping trip to Cape Disappointment. We expected rain then too, and I didn't want to run out of stitching.

Okay, so I'd procrastinated long enough, and I did my workout. Afterward, while we were eating lunch, the kitties wanted to go outside. There's still an awful lot of snow, but they managed to pick their way out to the edge of the field without ever setting a single paw in the snow. You can see Sadie on the left side of the image.

After lunch, I went to work on the largest of the leaves. The first one was done in my version of McTavishing. I say it's "my version" because I have absolutely no idea if I'm doing it the "right" way. Outside the leaf, and extending to the edge of the panel, I filled in with a hooking meander.

Some of these final leaves go all the way to the edge of the piece. For the first one, I simply echoed the shape.

For the next large leaf, I used this crocus pattern. "Crocus" is my name for it, but I imagine it has a different name. The outer edge was filled in with a meandering flower motif.

Finally, an insy-outsy-upsy-downsy pattern on this edge. I'm going to do a similar motif on an upcoming small quilt, and so this was good practice.

With those finished, I headed into the sewing room to sew together the quilt top for the Sewing Day wall-hanging. Sadie was there to help.

I'd pulled a lot of pretty fabrics from my stash to finish this off. I fussed and fumed and fumed and fussed. I couldn't decide which fabrics to use, nor how wide I wanted the borders. Sadie grew bored with all this fussing and fuming. I even messaged my quilting friend Marei to ask for her input.

When all was said and done, it was sewn together thus:

It ended up at 16 x 20 inches. That bottom fabric was some I picked up at one of the quilt shops visited during our last road trip. I wanted to use it, but I thought it would be too busy to use all the way around. I thought about using it for the back, but it seemed too pretty to be used for the back of a wall-hanging. Now it's sandwiched for quilting, and I'll probably get to it before summer.

With the little bluebird in the stitchery, I decided to use this one for the back. I had just a half yard of it, and it seemed like a good time to put it to use.

And that was the end of my sewing day.

But wait...there's more! Finally, finally, finally our mail service seems to have resumed. The mailman delivered something all the way to the front door! I've been waiting on tenterhooks for this latest gift box from my quilting fairy godmother, Ila. Look at these beautiful threads she sent this time:

Some of those cones are absolutely enormous! Wow...beautiful colors. These will get used with great appreciation. Now, I'm thinking I need to choose my next new project based on what threads I'll use to quilt it. 

Also included in the box, some great reference materials. If you've never looked at the Superior Threads website, there is a lot of helpful information there. I haven't had time to spend with this troubleshooting resource guide, but I have no doubt it will be chock full of helpful information and hints.

Also, these two books for inspiration.

Thank you, Ila. It's always a pleasure to go through one of these boxes from you.

Okay. Time to get going. I have a busy day ahead. You might want to do a little extra sewing today, just in case I don't have time for any at this end. We wouldn't want the sewing universe to get out of balance, now would we?