Nearing a Finish

 Good morning, my friends. Happy Friday to you! We're expecting some warm weather today. We have the windows open, and we're letting in the cool air while we can. It was warm yesterday too, but never warmed the house enough to require the air-conditioning. 

My agenda over the next few days will be a lot of cooking things ahead. I was perusing the calendar for the next couple of weeks yesterday, and I realized I'll be making enough food ahead (and taking enough frozen leftovers) that there won't be much need for any cooking along the way. Of course, breakfast and lunch don't count. Dinner is the meal that requires the most effort, and I'll have that pretty well taken care of for the whole trip.

Usually, I tackle my to-do list in the morning, and then sew when everything else is done. Yesterday, I was pretty sure I could finish off the quilting in less than an hour, and so I did that first. It went swimmingly, and I had it finished early in the day. I'd worried about using that colorful variegated thread in the borders, but I like how it looks.

As I was quilting along, I couldn't help remembering some of those jump rope jingles we used to say.

Mabel Mabel, set the table. Don’t forget the red hot peppers!

And that got me going on some of the others:

Not last night, but the night before

24 Robbers came knocking at my door

As I ran out, They ran in 

I asked them what they wanted and this is what they said:

Spanish dancer turn around 

Spanish dancer touch the ground

Spanish dancer give a high kick

Spanish dancer get out before you miss

There...you could run out of the rope, but if you stayed in, someone would yell "Hot Peppers!" and then they started turning the rope real fast. 

I'm actually amazed I was able to remember this. And I'm even more amazed that I could ever jump rope. I could even do "Double Dutch" (polishes fingernails on shirt).

But, I digress. When it was finished, I laid it out in front of the living room windows for a picture. It's pretty hard to see the quilting.

Here's how it looks from the back. I used black in the bobbin for the whole quilt.

Sometimes I have trouble turning corners with different quilting motifs. For this one, I just made a little loop, and then continued on my way.

Okay...so enough procrastinating. It was time to make the dish I'd assigned myself for the day. This is a Tuna Noodle Casserole. That went straight into the freezer. We'll eat it down the road. It's a Cooking Light recipe. If I'd used fat-free milk and reduced-fat cream cheese, I'd say it was diet friendly. My casserole has full-fat everything, and so all bets are off.

That was my only cooking-ahead job for the day. I had one last housekeeping chore before we leave. When that was finished, Smitty helped me square up the quilt for binding.

Sadie wanted to help too. She likes this quilt. 

Mmmmmm...everything looks delicious. I just love Meowxican food!

She held the quilt down while I sewed the binding strips together.

And then I sewed it on. Is there a better part of quilting than machine sewing that binding? Well...maybe finishing the hand-sewing, but we take these little victories where we can get them.

I'd wanted to quilt the chili peppers going in opposite directions in the two borders, but that would have required having the whole quilt resting in my lap. (Or it would have meant quilting it backwards, and I'm afraid my feeble mind is not capable of that.) It would have been nearly impossible to maneuver such a large quilt that way, and so I settled for varying their locations. The inner border has the peppers positioned roughly at the middle of each block. The outer border has them positioned roughly near the sashings.

And now the binding is clipped all the way around, and it awaits my hand-stitching needle. I'm hoping to get this finished before we leave on our trip. It would be nice to feel as if I'd finished something before taking a two-week break.

I'm happy to say the fabric I was awaiting arrived yesterday. This will allow me to finish off the quilt top for the Homestead quilt. It makes me happy that this fabric is called "Homestead." It's a good scale, and it gives me some good possibilities for sashing those unevenly-sized blocks. As one of you mentioned, who doesn't love those windmills?

Also, the stabilizer I've been waiting for will arrive today. I'll use it to finish off the "Spices" quilt, but that will have to wait until we return from our trip. It'll be at the top of my list when things get back to normal.

Okay, so breakfast is next, and then some slow-stitching. On today's list is to bake some cookies. I'm taking two kinds of cookies for our snacking pleasure. We always take Clif bars with us, but sometimes our respective sweet tooths demand something less healthy. When those are finished, I'll get going on with my quilt binding. It's going to be a nice day to sit by the window with my feet up and hand-stitch.