Plenty of Sewing

Good morning, my friends! Welcome to the last week before Christmas. Are you ready? We don't do much decorating around here any more. The best we can come up with is Christmas quilts for every horizontal and vertical surface. Erik and Mae are making dinner this year, although I'm bringing dessert. There isn't a whole lot for me to do. We'll have to do some grocery shopping this week, but things are pretty low key here at the Three Cats Ranch. 

Yesterday morning was spent purging my desk drawers. The purging of my office is finished now. I have just three drawers in the bedroom and my closet left to do. The drawers mostly just need reorganizing. The closet is a different story, but there's still plenty of time to finish all of it before our January 16th installation date. We should have no problem finishing off the rest of it before then. When I finished with the purging, I spent 30 minutes on the treadmill, and then I was free to spend the rest of the day sewing.

Quilting was first. I finished stitching the alternating half heart around the narrow brown border.

That didn't take too long, but I was being careful about not aggravating my wrists. My left wrist is the usual problem child. Yesterday, my right wrist started hurting. I suppose it's envious of all the attention my left wrist is getting. So, I didn't spend too much time on the quilting. Nevertheless, I wanted to try out the design I came up with for the leaf blocks around the outer edge of the quilt.

The image above shows the whole block. To break it down, I stitched veins into the pieced leaf.

The rest of the block is sewn together sort of log cabin style. So, I extended the line to the extreme corner of the block, and then quilted another leaf shape to the left of the pieced leaf. I've bumped up the contrast on these images to make it easier to see the quilting.

I stitched the left side first, and then followed the center line back down the right side. Then, I could move to the right side of the pieced leaf and quilt the same design.

And that looks good enough to me. I did one more like that, and then left it needle down for today's quilting. I didn't want to push my luck with my wrists.

While I ate my lunch, I let the kitties out for a bit. They didn't mind the cold weather. They keep their fur coats on all the time...inside and out.

If you ask Sadie, the best part of having the humans home is that there's someone around to cover her up in the mornings. She stayed like this until the doors opened.

They never stay outside for very long. After lunch, Smitty joined me in the sewing room to start sewing together the Stitching Wisdom quilt top. He has his own quilt there, and rude humans do not try to boot him off of it.

The four small quilt blocks were sewn into Churn Dash blocks. These will go at the corners of the quilt top.

Then, I did most of the cutting for the rest of the quilt. Remember this fabric? I purchased it several weeks back to use for the back of the Jericho Walls quilt. There was some left over. I needed 20 cornerstones for the Stitching Wisdom quilt.

The cornerstones are cut to 1-1/2 inches. I measured that center quilt block on the fabric, and it was exactly one inch. So, I fussy cut 20 little cornerstones. I'll have to sew very carefully so that the little center quilt block ends up as the portion showing on the cornerstones. If I keep them on top as I sew them together, it should be easy enough to see the line where my stitching should go.

And then I did a little more cutting. The red stripes on the right are for the sashing. Optimistically, I also cut binding strips (on the left) for when I get that far.

Also, I realized I'd never trimmed the remaining embroidered blocks to size. The rest of my sewing day was spent doing that. Except for the outer two borders, all the cutting is done, and I should be able to get a good way into sewing it all together.

That was enough sewing for one day. I wanted to try out a new recipe for Jerk Chicken Meatballs with BBQ-Pineapple Glaze. My picture wasn't as pretty as the one accompanying the recipe, so I'm borrowing theirs.

(Image credit: Christopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne)

It was surprisingly easy to make. The meatball recipe makes 12 golf-ball-sized meatballs. I was able to roast those in my toaster oven. Ground turkey is less expensive than ground chicken, and so I used that. The recipe calls for "2 tablespoons Jamaican jerk seasoning paste, such as Grace or Walkerswood." I couldn't find that in our grocery store, and so I settled for a dry rub that I found. Then, I inquired of The Google how I could make this work. As it turns out, I can mix equal amounts of the dry rub, cooking oil, and water to make the "seasoning paste." So I used two teaspoons of each to equal the 2 tablespoons I needed, and that worked out just fine. As always, you'll probably need a subscription to the NYTimes to access that recipe. If you can't get it using the link I've provided, email me, and I'll be happy to send it to you. It was very tasty. We liked it.

Okay, so I'll get back to my quilting today, and I'll have to limit my time there to pamper my wrists. Then, I'll get back to sewing together the Stitching Wisdom quilt top. It's Sunday morning, and so I need to get going on our Sunday morning Blueberry Oatmeal Pancakes. It's a sweet way to start the week. And today is 

(image credit: <a href="https://www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/4241233-national-maple-syrup-day">

National Maple Syrup Day Vectors by Vecteezy</a>)

Seems like a perfect way to celebrate, doesn't it?