Phenology Phinally Phinished

Good morning, my friends. In yesterday's blog, I was going to say I was determined to get back to my exercising routine with a walk on the treadmill. I think I've been saying it for about a week. In yesterday's post, I simply forgot, which was probably a good thing because it would have been a lie. Instead, I couldn't blast myself off the couch from my morning slow-stitching. The more I stitched, the more I wanted to finish. And so I stitched and stitched and stitched until I'd finished the last of it.

From there, it was given a good rinse to get rid of the Sticky Fabri-Solvy, and my "short" piece was finished. It still needs borders, quilting, and binding.

I have in mind to give it a border to represent each of the seasons, and I'll do it with mitered corners. I've only done mitered corners one other time, many years ago. I'll have to study up on how to do it, but that will be a little ways down the road.

So that pretty well used up most of the morning. I had one housekeeping chore to do before lunch, and then I headed into the sewing room after lunch. Smitty was my helper cat yesterday, and I found him lounging on the fabrics I'd left out the night before.

My goal was to finish the last two blocks I'd need for the Shop Hop 3.0 quilt. The first one gave me no end of grief. Admittedly, it was my own fault for being distracted and not paying attention to what I was doing. (I was already thinking about my next project.) The top pages of these book blocks are paper-pieced. I cut one of the strips too short. Somehow I didn't notice I'd done it until I was ready to start sewing them all together. (See "distracted" above.) So, I fixed that, only I did the wrong side. There is a left and a right to these.  So, there, I said a bad word, but then went ahead and did the side I meant to do. 

Then, I thought I'd sewn the whole thing upside down, and so I said another bad word. The same bad word. (My bad word vocabulary is fairly limited.) So I took out one of the seams, only to realize I had it sewn together correctly all along. (😠) So then I sewed it back together and sewed the whole block together. Sheesh. That took a lot longer than it should have. This block is to represent Quilts & Quilts the Fabric Shoppe in Branson, Missouri. 

I selected this fabric because it made me think of the limestone cliff landscape we'd seen in Arkansas, Missouri, and Kentucky. The shop was beautiful, but a little on the unfriendly side. I use the word "unfriendly" because that's the vibe I get immediately when I approach a store and see this sign:

And then, inside the store...this featherweight with a note pinned to the right side. It said, "Machine not for sale. Please don't mess with it." It really made me want to mess with it.

Also, they wouldn't cut a fat quarter for me, and so I needed to buy a half yard to get a piece large enough for my needs. Oh well. I'd say I won't be back, but then, that's probably obvious since the store is 2,035 miles away. 

The last block was this one from Must Love Fabric in Colleyville, Texas. This shop was recommended to me by my friend Lenelda from high school. You might remember Lenelda. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas, near Colleyville. Her mother lives in Salem, just about an hour south of me. We get to see Lenelda and her husband pretty frequently when she comes to visit her mother. Also, we attended the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show together back in 2015, which was (yikes!) almost ten years ago.

For this quilt shop visit in Colleyville, we were in her neck of the woods. And this was a great shop. Lots of beautiful fabrics, and plenty of room to move around. I selected this fabric because...Texas...and because of the wildflowers we'd seen growing all along the roadways. Texas Hill Country is surprisingly beautiful in the spring, thanks to our former first lady Lady Bird Johnson who encouraged the planting of wildflowers for highway beautification.

Now I'm ready to sew all these quilt blocks into a finished quilt. There is one project ahead of it, but this will get sewn into a quilt top before the end of the year. (Quilting will take longer.)

That was the last project on my list of WIPs. Next up, I'm going to make October's cat for the Cats in Pajamas quilt. October's color was listed simply as "light." I've selected a couple of fabrics, and I should be able to finish up October's cat today. Here are the cats I have for this quilt so far.

When that's finished, I'll be ready to move to the "Quilter's Choice" section of my whiteboard. I have in mind to do a "Fun Finish." Fun finish projects are projects I can get to quilting stage in one go-round.

In this case, I've selected this project. It's a small wall-hanging. I purchased this pattern when we visited the Quilter's Cove quilt shop in Newport, Oregon. It was too cute to pass up. There were kits of fabric available for making it, but they were over $100. I'll do just fine with the scraps in my stash, thank you.

So there are a few stops along the way before I can get to my sewing. Today I really am determined to get in a walk on the treadmill, and I have one quick and easy housekeeping chore to do. But first, I'm going to get started on the September and October stitcheries for the "Joy in the Ordinary" quilt. This one has been hooped up for at least a month, awaiting the arrival of my needle.

We've already had our breakfast this morning, and so that's where I'm heading next. It's a gray day outside. We're expecting rain, but it will be a trifling to what you're expecting there in the Southeast. Stay safe and dry, my friends.