Back in Business

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to February! I know...February started yesterday, but I sent a frog to do my bidding. Thank you to those who stopped by to meet him. I'm happy to say that we're back in action from our carpet job. Everything is reassembled and put away, and it's almost as if the whole thing never happened. It's nice to have the new carpet down, and it's really nice to have rid ourselves of tons of crap we no longer needed nor wanted.

Having worked hard putting things in order the day before, I rewarded myself with a day of sewing yesterday. We even had leftovers for dinner, and so it was truly an NBS day. The day started with Day 1 of the project Meg Hawkey cooked up to celebrate International Embroidery Month. I'm calling my project "Tiny Hearts." Here's the first one.

Day 2 has been posted already this morning, and I'll be heading there next. Also, I've taken the first stitches on The Story of My Day block. 

It was a nice day yesterday...sunny, which was surprising. We're even expecting a dry weekend. The kitties took advantage of the sunshine. Sadie caught the first vole of 2024. (I've pixelated him so you don't have to see the carnage.)

Smitty thought he should get in on the act.

Back inside, my first priority was to start getting caught up on the Dot-to-Dot Free Motion Quilting Challenge. I was able to get through Week 3 of the video tutorials. Here's how that went:

The first design was the "triangle starburst." Simple enough. This could also be turned around, making the starting point at the center of the triangle's hypotenuse. ("Hypotenuse." Yeah...I took geometry in high school. It's the only thing I remember.)

This next one is called an "echo starburst." They're triangles emanating from a starting point in the center and then another one echoing inside.

This next one is the "offset starburst." The starting point can be anywhere. I'm not very good at hitting that point on the return trip, and so I want to work on that.

For the next ones, I was just trying out some things to see how it would look.

Here, I added a little squiggle in the middle.

I paused for lunch and a nap before stitching the one below. While I was napping, I dreamed up this "lightning bolt" design with triangles on either side. It made me think of when I was learning shorthand, and my finger was constantly forming shorthand characters for any words I saw in print. 

No quilting session can be completed without input from my quilting cat.

We had some snuggles, and then I encouraged him to find another job.

The next motif was this "twirling starburst."

Here's another where I just started stitching with nothing in particular in mind. 

Same thing here.

Here, I reversed the triangle starburst I started with. I'm sure I'll get faster with this as I do it more, but I find I miss the speed and movement of spontaneous free motion quilting. It was the last motif of the day, and I couldn't resist adding those flourishes in each triangle.

Here's my frustration with my quilting. These little pulls. 

I asked my friend Marei (who has the same machine I do) if she knew what caused this. She answered what I suspected: that I need to take an extra "marking time" stitch when I change direction. That does help some, but it isn't the complete answer. I still get the pull sometimes even when I can remember the extra stitch. I suspect this is a tension issue, but maybe one of you has a different idea/solution. Please speak up if you have any ideas.

That was the end of Week 3 of the challenge. I took the quilt off the machine and over to the window for some pictures. As I passed from one room to the other, I noticed Smitty found another job guarding the stairs. It's important to have good security measures in place when you're quilting.

So this is the section I finished yesterday.

It's a little hard to see from the back, but here's a little peek.

Okay, and from there, I wanted to move to the sewing room. I neglected to mention that I'd ordered these two flannels. I needed a little more yardage for the back of the new flannel quilt I'm starting.

Yesterday, I went to work doing all the cutting for the Fall Flannel Four-Patch. Smitty was more help than you can possibly imagine. I suppose he thought he needed to make up for spending the entire day in the Clubhouse while the carpet guys were here.

Sadie was concerned about his tail.

Watch out, Smitty. You'll end up with a tail like mine.

When I could get around The Tail, I did all the cutting for the new flannel quilt. Since I was working from scraps, I wanted to make sure I had enough of everything before I started.

So here's my plan: Below is the Flannel Four-Patch I finished last year(?). I really like how this turned out, and so I'm making the same quilt from different fabrics. Looking at the quilt below, wherever there is a red square, I'll use the leaf print in the upper right of the image above. (That was used on the back of the French Roses quilt.) Where there is a red stripe, I'll alternate with the dark green or brown in the middle of the image above. The four-patches will be from the plaids in the lower right. I'll use those consistently from block to block, and I'll use scraps for the rest of the four patch.

For the back, I'll alternate the two fabrics on the left of the image above.

The only cutting I still need to do is to cut the remaining scraps for the four-patches. I'll do that as I make them. And I have lots of scraps to choose from.

For the next several days, I've decided to power on through and sew the whole thing together. And for extra incentive, I'm making starting and finishing this rag quilt my goal for February's

When all the cutting was done, it was late in the day, and so I stopped there. Today I'll work on Week 4 of the Dot-to-Dot challenge, and then I'll go to work sewing together the flannel four-patch. There isn't much more on todays agenda, and so that means it's going to be a mostly sewing day (MSD).

Don't you love it when you can start your day with a good plan? What's going on in your sewing room today? As for me, I'm trying those From-the-freezer Blueberry-Cinnamon muffins again. This time, I'm baking them in custard cups to see if I can get a better looking muffin. They should be done in just a few minutes. That makes it time to go. Muffins wait for no man, nor any woman either.