Quilting Commences

Good morning, my friends. It's a bright and sunny day here...always good to see. We need to make a trip into town today, but I'm also hoping to get outside for a walk. The kitties haven't been outside in several days. Since their excursions must be chaperoned for the time being, I'm going to get them outside for a while today too.

There were quite a few things on yesterday's agenda, sewing-wise, that is. I finished up the stitchery for the third "Story of My Day" block.

It still needed some pieced sashings added. This is yet another current project that is allowing me to use my smallest scraps...always appreciated. They're a bit of a puzzle to put together, but the instructions are very good.

There is still one more block to stitch, and I've yet to start on it. Nevertheless, they stitch up pretty quickly, and so I went ahead with my next embroidered block for the Domestic Affairs quilt. This will be the 7th of 12 blocks for this quilt.

I'll admit to dragging my feet a little getting started on the quilting for the maps quilt. Finally, my little cat dragged me to the sewing machine, and we went to work.

This quilt has quite a bit of plain black background (where I'll be doing some "artistic" quilting). Smitty wanted to contribute a good amount of cat fuzz. No quilt is complete without it.

I told Mike this quilt will either make or break my quilting confidence. I'm using a variegated multi-color thread in the bobbin, and I'll be using different colors on top.

There was a time when I would have stuck with a smoky monofilament for this, but the variegated thread has all the colors in the back and binding fabrics. For this quilt, I'll be bold and go with something that will actually show.

I can only give you peeks at what I'm doing. Since the quilt is done in six traditional quilt blocks and a large black canvas, it seems appropriate to stitch one block and its associated "artwork" per day. I started yesterday with a red thread in the middle block. Here's a peek at the quilting:

That didn't take long, and so I moved on to the second quilt block. I can't show you the quilting there, but I can give you a peek at one of the associated "art" motifs.

Okay, and that was all I was up for yesterday. I'll work on it some more today. From there, I was going to get a start on making the blocks to finish off Calendula Patterdrip's Cottage. When I took a look at the list of blocks I'd be making...

I was suddenly exhausted and couldn't sew another stitch. It was after 4:00 p.m. by then, and it felt too late in the day to start anything new. Also, I needed more time to prepare myself mentally to start cutting all the pieces for these. They'll use a lot of my browns and tans, and that will be a good thing. Overnight, I've had some time to plan my attack on these. I figure I'll do all the cutting and sewing for  one block design at a time, moving to the next one only when the first group is finished. The Friendship Star is a favorite of mine, and so that's a good place to start.

Okay, so there's no time like the present. It's time for breakfast and slow-stitching. With the sun shining like it is, it has all the ingredients for a good day. I hope you have a good day too.