Mostly Sewing

Good morning, my friends! It's Saturday morning. What could be better than that? Unless you have to work on Saturdays, and then...well, never mind. 

It was another slow day yesterday. I hadn't slept well the night before, and so I was fighting the urge to go back to bed for a good part of the day. I managed to get some quilting done in the morning. There were still four more leaves to quilt in the current round. I started with a conventional feather, and then added a hook inside. Also, I added some pebbling to the center vein.

For the next one, I filled it with swirls.

Then, I outlined the shape of each half of the leaf, and filled in with some circles in the middle.

For the last one, I did my favorite fern feather. 

From there, I took it off the machine to get a picture of the whole thing. It's hard to see the quilting from this angle.

Here's another sideways view. It's a little easier to see it this way.

Here's how it looks from the back.

Next, I'll move to the larger leaves, and these will take me to the edge of the piece. 

There are still about three rounds to go. With diligence, I can probably finish it before the end of next week. If I can get the binding sewn on before next weekend, I can take it along to finish the hand sewing when we head out for our twice-delayed camping trip.

It was lunchtime by then, and I succumbed to the urge to nap after I'd eaten. It was a good long nap, and I needed it. When I was ready to get back to my sewing, Smitty arrived to tell me he had other plans for his day.

It seems we all needed afternoon naps. He's discovered this spot in my sewing room closet. I have potential show quilts piled in here, all folded and stuffed into pillowcases for protection. He was lying right on top of them. I worried that his, um, fluff would seep down onto the quilts and get them dirty, so I gave him his own personal napping quilt over the top of the stack. It looks to be acceptable to Himself.

With him on hiatus, Sadie took over kitty helping duties. You'll never find a better helper.

March's color was announced for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge...green...and I was itching to make my block for the month. The next block for the Homestead quilt was the log cabin, mentioned in a previous post. Sadie helped me choose appropriate green strips for my quilt block.

And she made sure they were sewn together propurrly.

With green and red being complimentary colors, I decided to go ahead and keep the traditional red center for my green log cabin block.

Recalling the blurb about the log cabin from the pamphlet I received at Homestead National Monument, I did mine in the "Sunshine and Shadow" pattern.

The only other time I've done the log cabin block was on one of the first quilts I made. In this case, the blocks are laid out in the "Betty" pattern. I call this quilt "Blue Moon," and we use it on our bed. It is king sized.

And if you've been reading this blog for a very long time, you might remember this picture of our pretty Gracie helping me lay it out for a picture. She won a contest with this picture.

Okay, so getting back to the living cats of the Three Cats Ranch, Sadie was 'zhausted after all that helping. Fortunately, she has a little bed in the sewing room too.

Here are the rest of the blocks I've made for the Homestead quilt. They are all different sizes, and so this will be one where I'll tie it altogether with sashings. I'm already thinking about how to do it.

These fabrics I picked up in West Virginia will probably be included somehow. I have both the panel, and some accompanying yardage. I'll use one of the panel scenes in the Shop Hop quilt, and the rest can be included in the Homestead quilt.

With this accompanying yardage, I'm sure I can work something out for setting the different sized blocks I've made so far.

Okay, so future quilting aside, I'm determined to sew the borders on the New Mexico Kitchen quilt today. 

There are three to finish it off. I'll start there when my sewing day begins, and I'm hoping I can sew it into a finished quilt top by day's end.