Making Progress

Good morning, my friends. Just as I wrote those words, I looked out the window to see snow falling in wet, fat flakes. 

Looks like a good day to stay at home, and that's exactly what I'll be doing. It'll be just like yesterday, only Monday-er. Here's how old I am: I look forward to Mondays and a new round of crossword puzzles in my email. I like the ones from the New Yorker. Monday's is always the hardest, and they get easier through the week...which tricks me into thinking I'm getting smarter. Then, Monday comes around again for a more humbling crossword experience. 

So what happened yesterday, you ask. Or maybe you didn't ask, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I took the first stitches on the Snow Happens table runner. I'm going to like working with the perle cotton. It has a good heft.

There was one housekeeping chore on yesterday's list of to-do's. I did that, but I gave myself a day off from any kind of exercise. I'll get back to it today. When I made my way to the sewing room, I found Smitty there ready and eager to help.

Together, we finished off the last "tiles" for the Mosaic quilt. It was pinned to the foam core board, and I set it up vertically for this picture. Here's your peek.

Smitty had some good advice for sewing it together. I pixelated the area where he's lying. No peeking.

With all the applique finished for that, I could return the sewing machine to its "regular" sewing ways, changing the needle, and rethreading with some cotton thread. I wasn't quite in the right head space to start sewing the tiles together, and so I went to work making a hanging sleeve for the Beach Bum ladies. I had just a little bit left from that backing fabric. There was a strip just the right length cut off from the edge when I squared it up.

If this quilt were being entered in a show, I'd want the hanging sleeve to be 4 inches wide. I only had about 4-1/2 inches of width, and so this one is only about 2 inches wide. It'll easily accommodate a half-inch dowel rod. We're doing our grocery shopping tomorrow (assuming this snow doesn't turn into something bigger). We'll pick up a dowel rod then, and the Beach Bums will be on their way to a permanent home on one of our bedroom walls.

From there, it was time to pull up my big girl panties and sew those mosaic tiles together. Sadie helped me clean up the mess in the sewing room. (I find it difficult to work when chaos surrounds me.)

And then we sewed the whole thing together. That was pretty easy. One piece was rotated 90°, but that was an easy fix. Here's your peek.

As expected, the subject of the photo isn't clearly defined. I believe I'll be able to make it work with plenty of thread outlining. I'll use a black thread for that. Going back and forth about it, I'm thinking I'll do the thread work with the backing fabric in place. If I were doing thread "painting," I would do it just through the batting, and then add the backing later. With this, I believe it will work as quilting, and so I'll probably add the back from the get-go. Unless I change my mind. And I might. 

Okay, so I'll have to get back to my workouts today, and I need to make up a grocery shopping list. We'll plan on doing that tomorrow. Aside from that, it'll be all sewing all the time. And, while the snow is welcome, it should hold off until we stock up on supplies tomorrow. Just now, I'm heading outside to shout out my preferences. That should work, right?

And as I wrote those words, Mike yelled to me from downstairs, "It's sticking!" And so it is. 

It's going to make my snow measuring device (red arrow) very happy. It could turn into an interesting day.