Fanciful Stitching

Good morning, my friends. It's another coolish, cloudy day here at the Three Cats Ranch. I was hoping we could eat outside tonight, but it's probably going to be a little too chilly. That's okay. Summer is only just barely getting started. Generally, we don't get predictably warm weather until after the Fourth of July holiday. Speaking of the Fourth, we have a stay-at-home celebration planned. A friend with no family nearby has a Fourth of July birthday, and we've invited him up for dinner on that day. I'll bake him some cookies. Everyone needs a fuss made over them on their birthday, don't you think? So, that will be fun, and it'll be a good way to celebrate our Independence Day.

As for yesterday's comings and goings, I had a pretty easy day planned for myself. I needed to look at Lesson 5 (of 12) on my Photoshop Elements online course. Finally, we worked on something that I didn't know how to do. And (with apologies to Tom Hanks)...

LOOK AT WHAT I HAVE CREATED!!!!!

Don't feel bad if you're not impressed. I'll say it wasn't easy, though. We created two "layers," one with color, and one with my photograph of the stargazer lily. The color layer was at 5 x 7 inches, and the photograph was copied over it at 4 x 6 inches to created a print with a border. I could have made the border wider or narrower by changing the size of the layer, and I could make it any color I wanted as well. We're going to do more with this image later, and so I have it saved with the rest of my class photos. The next lesson will post tomorrow.

So that took longer than expected, but I still spent some time with my slow stitching. When I'd done enough of that, I went to work creating a little quilt top from the Tiny Hearts stitchery. Using scraps from my stash, I added two borders to finish it off.

There was enough of that heart border fabric to make a back for it as well.

From there, I sandwiched it for quilting. In the center panel, I outlined the largest middle heart and then, for functionality, I did a looping meander around some of the other smaller hearts.

Just inside the narrow blue border, I used one of the fancy stitches on my sewing machine and stitched all around the edge.

That's stitch number 413 on my Bernina 750QE machine.

Outside the blue border, I selected another heart stitch from my sewing machine and stitched all the way around with that.

That's stitch number 712 on my machine.

And that was enough quilting for such a small piece. From there, I had enough of the blue to make a binding for it. Now the binding is sewn on by machine. This morning, I'll finish off the hand-sewing.

The piece ends up at 13 x 15 inches...a small wall-hanging size. It was too late in the day to start on anything else, but also too early to do nothing. I decided to work on some trip planning.

Since Mike and I are taking our truck camper when we go to Alaska next year, we're going to get our Jeep Wrangler set up for towing. It will be nice to have the Jeep along to get around town in Alaska without needing to unhook the camper every time we want to leave our campsite. It'll also be less stressful for the kitties if they can stay in one place instead of being carted all over. We've also realized that having the Jeep along will mean we won't get stuck in a remote location in the event of some kind of mechanical failure on the truck. (Perish the thought.)

So with all that in mind, we feel as if it is advisable to take a "shake-down cruise" once we get the Jeep outfitted for towing. We've planned a trip to Moab for early September. We've wanted to go Jeeping in Moab for a long time. Some years back, we rented a Jeep in Moab and drove the Schaffer Canyon Road in Canyonlands National Park. It was great fun, and we've talked about going back ever since. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from that ride. The scenery was spectacular. That's the Green River you see below.

This is me lounging on a natural bridge high above the river. It looks scary, but the natural bridge was actually about ten feet wide. Otherwise, you'd never get me out on something high like this.

And all of that to say I spent the rest of the afternoon planning a short (for us) trip. We'll go after Labor Day. When I get started on planning a trip, I get completely sucked in, and anything else in the world ceases to exist. It's like reading a really good book. Here's our route. It's a two-week trip. Nothing too exciting, but the Jeeping will be great fun.

We're not going anyplace we haven't been before, but we will spend a little more time in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area than we have in the past. Always before, we've just driven through. We'll spend a couple of days there this time around. 

Okay, and when I was satisfied with that, I headed downstairs to heat up some leftovers for dinner. There, I found Smitty taking in the day's last rays.

Today I'll spend some time with my slow-stitching, and I'll finish hand-stitching the binding on the Tiny Hearts wall-hanging. After that I'll be starting on my list of WIP's. Those haven't seen any progress since the beginning of the year, and so it'll be good to move those projects along. 

If I were to take them in order, I'd be starting with the next "When Quilters Gather" block. These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far. I'm going to make one more, and call it quits.

Even though it's the last block for this quilt, the idea of it fills me with dread. I'll get to it before I finish with my WIP's list this go-round, but I'm going to start somewhere else on the list. The quilters will have to wait. Also on my list are two new scrappy projects. When I make my way into the sewing room, I'll pick a place to start and then get busy.

Okay, slow-stitching here I come. There's plenty to keep me busy today.