A Little Bit of Quilting

Good morning, my friends. I got lucky with the weather for yesterday's outing again. Despite having entered the "Big Dark" season, it was a dry and sunny day. Sunglasses were required. That's three for three in a single week. This being our 46th year in the Pacific Northwest, I'm not naive enough to think this will continue, but I certainly appreciate it when it happens. 

The spa where I get my pedicures is a new building. There's still construction going on all around it, but the landscaping at the spa is beautiful. I was surprised to see these pretties still blooming.

It was nearing dinner time when I arrived home again. I had just enough time to get the sewing machine set up for quilting the Color My World baby quilt. With any luck, I could do a little quilting. Already, I had a bobbin wound with this yellow Bottom Line thread. I like Bottom Line in the bobbin. I use it whenever I can.

For this quilt, I've decided to use yellow thread both top and bottom.

On top, I opened a new spool of this King Tut variegated yellow.

This was a gift from my quilting fairy godmother, Ila. Thank you, Ila. 

When I had the machine threaded and set up, Smitty wanted to take over the quilting. Unfortunately, his legs are too short to reach the paw pedal, and so it didn't work.

Ceding the chair to me, I took over and checked the thread tension. Looking good there.

I'm quilting this in the same way I quilted a baby quilt from the same pattern. I'm doing dot-to-dot quilting, but it will require some marking for the half square triangles and the solid squares. I used my Hera marker to make a crease on the first half square triangle.

And then I went to work. If you play your cards right, you can quilt all the way across the quilt without needing to cut threads, and without traveling over the same area twice.

I'm using that center crease to create a sort of four-patch area where I can dot-to-dot with my stitching.

It makes a sort of flower design.

And then, I just continued across the row in the same way. This row is made up all of four-patches and half square triangles.

This design looks pretty from the back when it's all finished.

That was as far as I went for the first day. I had a Homey Chicken Stew in my slow cooker, and it needed some attention. I shredded the chicken and added some frozen peas. Looks pretty good, huh?

After that, it needed a few more minutes to heat up again after the addition of the frozen peas. While we waited for that, we watched the local news and weather, and I spent some more time on my slow stitching, finishing off the second snowman.

So, I'm approaching the halfway mark.

Now, I have the third snowman in my hoop, and I'll start on him next.

So, there's not much going on today. I have one easy housekeeping chore, and I want to get in a Bowflex workout. Also, if I'm feeling energetic, there's another new biscotti recipe I'd like to try. 

Hopefully, I'll have the baby quilt to binding stage by the end of the day. I've been keeping a splint on my left wrist to ward off tendonitis. It helps, but it doesn't completely prevent the soreness. So, I'll quilt as long as it seems sensible, and then I'll stop. I'm thinking if I do three of the six rows, take a break, ice my wrist, and then finish the final three rows, I might be able to get through it without breaking myself. Time will tell.