Sailing into the Sunset

Good morning, my friends. How is everyone doing this morning? Just now Mike read off the week's forecast to me. It looks like it's going to be smooth sailing for our carpet installation on Monday of next week. Temps are supposed to get up to 58°F that day. Why, it's practically bikini weather...if I were still wearing bikinis...which I am not.

It was a busy day of sewing yesterday. Originally, I'd planned to finish off the When Quilter's Gather block. When I headed into the sewing room, I changed my mind and decided to finish off the challenge piece first. I was having a hard time deciding how to finish it, and I really just needed to get it out of the way. And since I was clueless about how to finish it, I decided to take the first step of trimming it to size. I wanted to give the design some breathing room, but I wanted to keep it small too.

It was tempting to stop there and just give it a black binding. Envisioning that, it seemed kind of meh. I thought it needed a border of some kind, and so I auditioned several different fabrics. When I selected this black batik, I liked it immediately. The gray waves in the design suggested water to me.

So I added the border, but adding just a black binding still seemed kind of boring. I had a narrow strip of the sunset background fabric that was trimmed off, and so I used that to make a flange.

From there, I was ready to begin the quilting. I stitched down both edges of the applique, but I did that stitching only through the batting. I didn't want that stitching to be visible on the quilt back.

It's easier to see this from the batting side.

From there, I added the backing...something I found in my stash that's been there a long time.

Adding that to the back, I did the rest of the quilting...a couple of arcs at the top and some ripples in the water at the bottom.

Then, it was ready for binding.

It took about 45 minutes to hand-stitch the binding, and my challenge quilt was done. It ends up at 14.5 x 16 inches.

Here's how it looks from the back. I'm calling this "Sunset Sail."

Sadie was helping me make decisions all along the way.

Okay, and then there was still time in the day to make a little more progress on When Quilter's Gather.

The part above the red line in the image below is finished now. I should have no problem finishing up the rest of it today.

We had dinner out last night. If I'd made the pot roast I was planning, I would have had to cut my sewing day short. Besides, we both had a bad case of cabin fever, having been confined to the house for the better part of two weeks. We were both really glad we'd gotten out last Tuesday, or there's no telling what might have happened. If you've read Stephen King's The Shining, well...I'll just say I understand now what happened to Jack Torrance in that book. (And if you haven't read it...oooh...you should.)

Okay, so it's a new day. I'll finish up When Quilters Gather and I'll do some work on the Painted Ladies quilt today. Also, I want to get in a walk on the treadmill. And I really will get my pot roast going early this afternoon. Aside from that, it's the same old same old. If any of you are in San Diego right now, I hope you escaped the flooding. Sheesh. Mike and I lived in North San Diego County when we were teenagers. I've never seen that sort of thing in that part of the world. Stay safe, my friends.

All right...off I go. Have a good day, everyone.