Seasonal Work

Good morning, my friends. 'Tis the season to work on my seasonal quilts, apparently, because that was how I spent my day yesterday. Sadie was there to help.

And lucky me...I had two kitty helpers.

Smitty's job was to mind the rulers. 

With so much help, it was easy finishing off the quilt top for the Seasons quilt.

And I guess I won't be traveling south to The Cotton Patch after all because I took a second look at my stash and came up with these two long-time residents. I had three yards of each, which was plenty to piece together a back.

I sewed a wide strip of the orange between two strips of the leaf print to get the width I needed.

Also, I decided to give it a black binding instead of the polka dot. I'm afraid the polka dot would have been too busy and distracting. Sadie really likes this quilt. She'll be happy when I finish it...probably not until sometime toward the end of next year.

There was still time left in the day, and so I pulled out the Phenology quilt. It was already sandwiched for quilting. I did some straight line quilting around the embroidered design and I stitched around the outer circle.

When I'm quilting on my domestic machine, I often use some of the fancy stitches, and that's what I did here. I stitched a row of fancy stitches around the border. It's hard to see on the quilt itself, and so I'll show you the screen from my sewing machine. My machine is a Bernina 750QE, and so these numbers are listed for reference. For spring, I did this flower.

For summer, this one seemed close enough to a sun, and I used it.

For fall, this line of leaves.

And snowflakes for winter. The snowflakes didn't stitch out exactly like this. I'm not sure, but I think there might be a programming error. In any case, I used it, and I'm leaving it, even if it doesn't exactly look like a snowflake.

Here's how it looks from the back. You can see that funny snowflake toward the bottom.

And then it was ready for binding.

There should be no problem finishing it off this morning. It will be my 23rd finished quilt for 2024. Not a bad showing when you consider we were traveling for three full months this past year.

So I believe I'll be finishing up the second bicycle on my slow-stitching today. For sure, I'll finish off the quilt binding. I'm going to be starting a new project soon. A friend from high school is expecting his first grandchild next month. I offered to make a baby quilt. They're expecting a girl. When I asked about colors, I was told greens and beiges. My supply of both was light if I wanted to make a baby quilt, and so I went shopping online for something appropriate. This will be the focus fabric. I'll also be using some coordinating fabrics from my stash.

And I know just what I'm going to do. I just need to get started. The pattern I'm using will be the same pattern I'm often using to make donation quilts for Quilts for Kids. It goes together fast, and so I should have this finished within a couple of days of starting it.

Okay, so today's agenda includes a couple of housekeeping chores, and I'm going to get serious about baking some muffins today. We've invited some neighbors over for a ham dinner on New Year's Day, and so tomorrow's agenda will include grocery shopping. I need to make up a list today. Most of today's sewing (if not all) will be hand stitching. I'm looking forward to finishing off Phenology by the end of the day today.