Scant Progress

Good morning, my friends. Yesterday seemed a little hectic, but only because I had to drive into town for a doctor's appointment. I sweetened the deal for myself by heading to my favorite fabric store afterward. Happily, I found some fabric to finish off the "Spices" quilt and I bought some solid black yardage while I was there. There are no plans for the black, but I like having a good supply of black and white on hand since I use it fairly frequently. I'm down to my last half yard, and so it seemed a good time to supplement my stash. 

As for the "Spices" quilt, I'm also waiting for a new kind stabilizer to arrive. There are a couple of art quilt groups I follow on Facebook, and someone mentioned a more rigid stabilizer called Peltex (made by Pellon) that she liked for doing threadwork. The "Spices" quilt will have a lot of threadwork, and so I'm going to give it a try. For now, I still can't show you anything, including yesterday's fabric purchase. I'm afraid the fabric would give it away.

Before leaving in the morning, I had plenty of time to finish off the Girls' Getaway block. This one is called "Girls' Getaway Week."

These are all the embroidered sections and pieced blocks I have for this quilt so far.

And I don't know about you, but after a hard day at the fabric store, I needed a nap when I got home. It was late in the day before I could get back to my sewing. I decided to do a little more quilting. 

Heading to the mid-arm machine, I hadn't looked much at the quilt back. When I turned it to look at the back of one of the blocks, I found I'd quilted a little pleat into it. 

(Image credit: "frustrated woman credit to https://1dayreview.com" by 

1DayReview is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

Okay, so what to do? What to do? Briefly, I considered simply whip-stitching it down when I'd finished the quilting. The block was at one of the corners, and it wouldn't require too much picking of threads if I did that. I decided on the latter. I knew I'd never be happy with the quilt if I fixed it the quick and dirty way. And so I spent the rest of the afternoon taking out the quilting in that one block, and then requilting it.

And now...no pleat. These undoing jobs are painful in the process, but gratifying when they're finished. I was glad I went to the effort, even if it does mean I've probably spent more time unquilting this project than I have actually quilting it.

Now, it's needle down on this next block. I should have some time to finish two more blocks today.

The dahlias are making progress. We've had two cool and drizzly days of weather today and yesterday. We're expecting more summer-like weather in the coming week. That should get them going. This is the Checkers dahlia.

At the opposite end of the bed, the Bumble Rumble dahlia is pretty well opened. There's just a little on the right that hasn't quite unfurled all the way.

So today will be a stay-at-home day, fortunately. Most days are. I have on tap to do a couple of short housekeeping chores, and I want to bake a peach cobbler. It's a recipe I found online recently, and it's baked in an iron skillet. I've scaled the recipe to make it a cobbler for two, and that will make a tasty dessert for this evening. I'll say more about that in tomorrow's post.

Also, I'm ready to take the first stitches on the Phenology embroidery piece. It makes sense to start with August.

"It Takes a Village" is still right where I left it. I'm hoping I can get a couple more rows sewn together by day's end.

So that's a long to-do list for the end of my week. We have just about ten days before we leave on our trip. My goal is to get my projects to a good stopping place before we head out. 

I'll close with a little Q&A. Some couple of these questions are a little bit old.

The first two questions are related to this image:

My friend Karen asks:

Q.: How do you acquire a map? 

A.: We got ours from Amazon.com. There may be other sources.

My friend Quilting Grandma asks:

Q.:  Northern Michigan seems to be missing. Have you been there yet?

A.: I'm assuming you're referring to the Upper Peninsula, and yes. We've been there at least twice. Look more closely at the picture, and you'll see that it's filled in.

 My friend Karen asks:

Q.: How do you clean the tiny blossom holes on the humming bird feeders?  

A.: For now, I'm just running water through them and making sure it runs in a steady stream. If I need something more down the road, I'll use pipe cleaners. (And you thought pipe cleaners were just for crafts!)

Okay, my friends. A busy day awaits. Time to get going.