Quilting and Sewing

Good morning, my friends. As is often the case, I'm writing fast this morning. Sue and I are getting together for breakfast, and I'm going to hand-off the Ties & Tails quilt to her. So let's just get to the quilting and sewing without further ado.

Some housework was accomplished yesterday morning, and I got in a workout. Lunch was early, and then I went to work on the dot-to-dot challenge. My goal was to finish off the section in the first week's video. Of course, no quilting expedition is complete until Smitty shows up to help. Honestly, I don't know how I get anything done when my cat isn't by my side...helping.

And this is a purrennial purroblem for me. Cats like quilts. They are luke warm about quilting.

Pawssibly for the furrst time ever, I was able to get him to lie on the chair beside me.

He liked this so much, it gave him a blep.

I was just barely started on this from the day before. First, I did this large-ish triangle. Angela Walters has shown us two designs, but not a lot of instruction about what to do where. There's also a Facebook group, and everyone seems to be doing their own thing with respect to how and where to use the two motifs. For the triangle, it seemed like a half-starburst would get the job done.

For this space, I decided to combine the two diamond shapes into one. After quilting it this much, it seemed as if I should do something more in the open triangular area toward the bottom right of the image.

So I did a partial starburst there, and then did the same thing on the other side. Also, I quilted a starburst into this large-ish square.

This "Line Tamer" ruler is working great for this project. I can align the line on the closed end with the "dot" I'm trying to hit, and then my lines stay nice and straight. I'm using the ruler for longer lines, stitching free-hand for the shorter ones.

This was another spot where I combined the two shapes to make one. When I'd quilted all the way across the center line, it still seemed as if I needed to fill in the open triangles on either side.

And so I quilted a couple of echoing triangles there. I'm really having fun with this.

Now this whole first section is quilted, plus a little more I was supposed to leave open.

Here's how it looks from the back.

Now, I'll set this aside until the next video is released sometime next week. Sadly, I'm going to fall behind on this the week our carpet is installed. We'll have to take the sewing machine off its table and set it aside until the work is done. Oh well. The videos will be up indefinitely, and so I can do them any time.

Next, I headed into the basement sewing room and went to work making four more houses for the Painted Ladies quilt. This first one isn't sewn together because the roof section will go at the bottom of the row, and the house will be at the top. (This will make more sense in a minute.)

And then, I made three more houses.

They were sewn together end to end as I made them.

Here's the last one.

Then I sewed Row number 8 of 10 rows to the rest of the quilt...there on the right side. You can see how the roof of house number one is at the bottom, and the rest of the house is at the top.

Okay, and then it was time to make dinner.

When I get home today, I have just one short housekeeping task to do, and then I'll move along on my list of WIPs. Next up is the next Barn Block. This one appears less complicated than the last ones I've done. 

If I can finish that, I'll move along to the final two blocks for the Whimsical Quilt Garden.

That will take at least a day or two to finish off. 

Okay, so we're caught up on the news. If I hurry downstairs, I'll have a little time for slow-stitching before I need to get ready to go. It's Friday, my friends. That's always good news.