Sewing by Computer

Good morning, my friends. It's going to be a run-around day for me. My camera is ready to be picked up from its spa treatment, and not a minute too soon. I've missed it. The pictures I've been taking for the past several weeks have been taken with my old Nikon camera. When I couldn't get the Nikon repaired a few years back, I ended up purchasing a Panasonic that I like much better. We ended up pirating some parts from an even older Nikon camera to get the newer model working again. It's been Mike's camera ever since, and so I've been borrowing it from him. I'll just be happy to have the Panasonic back. I have a couple of other errands to run while I'm out. Hopefully, I'll still have some time for sewing.

Most of my yesterday was spent in my upstairs office. That's where my quilting machine, Eliza, is located. Sadie only comes upstairs occasionally. Smitty has drawn a bright red line at the bottom of the stairs that lead up. He has ceded much territory in the house to her, including his favorite top rung of the kitty pole. 

The upstairs remains off limits to her except when she sneaks up. While I was doing my quilting yesterday, I noticed she was skulking around behind the sewing table. When I saw her, she realized she'd been caught being alive while upstairs again, and she high-tailed it back downstairs. This was as close as I came to having any kitty help yesterday.

I suspect she was using the Calendula Patterdrip quilt as a kitty fort while it was draped over the machine for the past several weeks. She does that.

It's probably decidedly inconvenient for her now that I've actually started quilting it. 

As for sewing by computer. I think I have an idea what to do with the Seasons quilt now. I'm still deciding on fabrics, but I'm inclined to set each embroidered "season" beside an appropriate pieced quilt block.Yesterday's time for this quilt was spent entirely on the computer. Here's what I came up with.

This is spring's block.

I'll use this tulip block from Center Street Quilts for spring's pieced block. I'll use just two of the tulips to make the block the right size for my quilt. And I don't have this all worked out yet. Trying to follow my thought process is akin to the most complicated of mazes.

For summer...

I'll use this "Summer Sun" block I found on Quilter's Cache. It's paper-pieced (😝!), but I think I can stand it for just one block.

Here is fall's block:

That block choice was easy. I'll do a maple leaf for fall. This one is also available on Quilter's Cache

Finally, winter's block:

For winter, I'll do this snowflake. I found this free pattern online.

You might remember when I used this block to finish off the Snowflakes quilt a few years ago.

Okay, so I felt as if I'd put in my time on that project for the day. It was time to turn my attention to the quilting for Calendula Patterdrip's Cottage. I'd left off with this block the day before. Continuing on with the dot-to-dot quilting, there were four more pieced blocks to reach the right side of the quilt.

From there, I had to decide how I was going to make my way from right to left again. If you look at the image below, I've marked where a seam line exists within the broom straw stitching. I quilted just a little higher than that on the broom, but decided I'd quilt just the four pieced blocks on the right side of the image.

So here we go.

This is my go-to motif for flying geese. You can see the broom straws extended into the triangle at the lower left. I didn't want to do the dot-to-dot stitching line over the embroidered lines, and so I started quilting the broom straws there.

It seems I neglected to take a larger picture of the broom straws, but it was pretty simple stitching within and around the straws.

There were open areas toward the top of the broom straws where I could have done some meandering. I decided to do one of the motifs from this book:

This is a witch silhouetted by the moon. I can't draw to save my soul, but I can copy something if someone else will draw it for me first. This didn't come out as well as I'd hoped, but it's good enough.

I did a little better on the other side where I quilted this bat I found online.

So I've been wearing the splint on my left wrist religiously, and I'm not experiencing any pain. Also, I'm setting a timer and limiting my quilting time to one hour per day. It'll take longer that way, but I won't have to skip any days for wrist resting. In the end, it will probably work out to be about the same amount of time. 

Finishing up yesterday, I took this picture of the quilt back.. You can see where I've quilted the broom straws in the upper right.

And I left it needle-down for today's hour of quilting.

So, it's going pretty well. I'll just keep on keeping on until I've quilted all the way to the top.

As I mentioned, it's a run around day for me. I guess I'll start my running right now. Happily, it's a sunny day. I have no complaints about our December weather. We've had some rain and a few snowflakes. For the most part, it's been pretty nice.