Dog Day Afternoon

Good afternoon, my friends. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we had grocery shopping to do this morning; thus, the lateness of my arrival here. You guys have probably already finished your coffee. I'm only on my second of three cups. If I seem a little addled, just know I'll improve with the addition of caffeine. Maybe by the end of this post, I'll even be able to speak coherently. A nap can't hurt either.

There wasn't a lot of time for quilting yesterday. Mike was busy taking measurements on my machine in order to build his 3D thread path guard. He has it all figured out and printed now, but nothing has been installed. You'll be my first call when it's all finished...probably in tomorrow's post.

So, I spent most of my afternoon in the basement sewing room. First, I finished off the second of the two blocks I was stitching for The Story of My Day quilt. This is "Making a Daisy Chain."

I needed to add borders to both blocks, and that's how I spent my sewing room time. Sadie was absolutely appawlled to see I had stitched a woofie.

Smitty was equally put out.

That is pawsitively disgusting.

Much to their dismay, I purrsisted in my efforts. When it was finished it looked like this:

They were not happy about this. Not one little bit. And so they were relieved to find no woofies on the next block.

We puurfur this one.

When it was finished, it looked like this.

When this project comes up on my embroidery dance card next time, I'll finish off the last three blocks. For now, these are the 22 blocks I have for this quilt.

It was late in the day by then. I still had a full hour to spend on my quilting. I started with the boot. It was done just by outlining the outside of the boot, and the inner lines near the lacings. The "foot powder" was also outlined, and I did some pebbling where the lid is. 

Then, I added a spiderweb to the branches above and a dangling spider hanging down.  I'm sorry it isn't easier to see the quilting. Imagine how my eyes feel when I'm trying to see what I'm doing.

But things are looking up because the lamp I ordered from Amazon arrived while I was doing my quilting. I had it clamped to the edge of the table, but there's a space on the machine that actually give me better light. It's a gooseneck style, and so I can maneuver it to put the light right where I want it.

Okay, and then moving to the right, Smitty directed the quilting on this embroidered block.

I ended up just outlining the books and the quill pen. Then, to finish it off for the time being, I outlined the dome. I'll finish the clock when I come back the other direction.

That was all I had time for. I rotated the quilt sideways and left it needle down for these two flying geese. At the bottom of the image below, you can see where I left off quilting the broom when I made my first pass. Today, I'll quilt where the broom straws are bundled together. There's also a broomstick above, but that will wait for another day or two.

While we watched the news last night, I took the first stitches on February's block for A Year in the Garden. Since I haven't done this morning's slow stitching yet, I'll work on that next.

But first, some lunch. And probably more coffee. Care to join me?