A Little Progress

Good morning, my friends. It was a run-around day yesterday, and so I made scant progress on my quilting project. Before I left home, I finished stitching the "Walk the Dog," block for The Story of My Day quilt. I just love these primitive drawings from Anni Downs.

It still needs a border, but I'll probably hold off on that until I have the second block finished. This morning, I'll start stitching the Make a Daisy Chain block.

From there, I needed to get out and do some running around. I dreaded going into Beaverton during the Christmas season. In my experience, the traffic is madness this time of year. Thankfully, I managed to avoid the worst of the traffic. I needed to drop off a couple of jars of pasta sauce for Erik and Mae. I didn't do any canning this year, but I had plenty of pasta sauce to share from last summer. When Mae told me they were out of pasta sauce...well, what could I do but be Mom-to-the-rescue? I didn't want them succumbing to pasta sauce starvation. Perish the thought.

After that, I picked up my camera. And let me just say I'm very happy to have my camera back. It's been away for about six weeks. I had two more stops to make. I wanted to purchase some more 2-cup ramekins. When I made the turkey pot pies for dinner a few nights ago, I was surprised to find all but two my 2-cup ramekins already in use. I was able to scrounge out two more from the RV, but I needed four more. So...okay. I picked up six more on sale at Target. Then, I made one more stop on the way home. I picked up some currant jelly. I'm considering making a cranberry upside down cake for our annual ham dinner on New Year's Day. I'd paid for the jelly and was walking to the car when I remembered it was actually the rhubarb upside down cake that needed currant jelly. And since rhubarb isn't in season right now...well, I'm prepared. Spring can't come soon enough.

After that...home. Yay. I survived yet another trip among The English...at Christmas. Feeling terribly invigorated by my successful outing (even if I did get something I didn't need), it was time to turn to my quilting project. I'm about to show you my second attempt in these next two images. For my first attempt, I'd quilted this block...

and about 2/3 of this block, when the machine made a noise that always means the back is turning into a mess. When I stopped to look at the back, there was a bird's nest at every little intersection. Drat! (Only...I said something that wasn't "drat.") You can still see the needle holes where I took out the previous line of stitching.

So, here's the problem child. This is the last little pass-through section on the thread path before it reaches the needle. When I shift the quilt around or move the thread in some way, it can get looped around this little thingamabob. (Technical quilting machine terms.) 

This has been a problem since I brought the machine home from the store. And you'd think I'd learn to check before stepping on the food pedal, but no. I'm old. What can I say?

So, I showed this to I-have-a-new-3D-printer-and-I'm-not-afraid-to-use-it Mike, and he got kind of excited about designing some kind of guard for it. I reminded him that it needed to be able to accommodate the thread passing through at the top and the bottom, and then I turned him loose. He's pretty funny right now with his 3D-printing activities. It reminds me of the first few years of our marriage when we bought our first used washer and dryer. It was so exciting to be able to wash clothes in my very own washer, I was tempted to take clean clothes out of the closet just so I could use the washing machine. (As you might guess, laundry is a lot less interesting these days.) So anyway...3D-printer Mike is on the job. I'll keep you posted on any exciting developments. It wouldn't be completely out of line to invest in one of those horns they blow when a goal is scored in soccer.

(image credit: "Vuvuzela" by ep_jhu is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)

Okay, so after that snafu, it took me about twice as long to take out the stitches as it did to sew them. When I could finally get on my way again, I re-quilted them, and then continued on to the left. There was one more pinwheel.

And then this single flying goose block.

And then a few spacer pieces.

And, finally, one more pinwheel to reach the left edge of the quilt.

From there, I had to decide how much to quilt as I moved back toward the right. I left it needle down in this spot. I'll quilt the two pieced blocks you see there.

And then, I'll move to this embroidered block. I'll probably do mostly outlining here, but I'm going to do some pebbling in the jar. I figure bubbles...or warts, like the jar says.

The quilting is now going to be mostly embroidered blocks for a while, although there are a few pieced blocks along the way.

Something I've learned with yesterday's effort is that I need more light over my sewing table. The machine is situated next to a window, which gives me good light early in the day. This late in the year, however, it starts getting dark around 4:00 p.m., and the sun generally sets sometime during the 5:00 hour. I had the hardest time seeing the white thread on nearly white fabric when I tried taking out that errant quilting. This morning, I ordered myself a clamp-on lamp. Amazon will deliver it this afternoon. I know I'm supposed to be mad at Amazon, but I'll tell you a little secret: I 💓 Amazon.

Okay, so this cold weather has kitties hiding out under the blankets. They've been almost no help at all with the sewing and quilting lately.

I'm thinking I'll find them in these same positions when I go downstairs in a few minutes. 

So there's nothing else on my to-do list today except to take a walk on the treadmill. Aside from that, it'll be an NBS day. I'm looking forward to making a little progress on the "Seasons" quilt. For now, my top priority is to spend one hour on the quilting. It's a good amount of time to avoid aggravating my wrist, and it's surprising how much can get done in that amount of time. But first, slow-stitching. Off I go.