Challenge Complete

Good morning, my friends. It's a bright sunny day, but still very cold. Brrrr. If it weren't so cold out, it might be a nice day for a walk. But it is cold, so...nah. I'll stay inside where it's warm and do my walking on the treadmill. Also, there's plenty of walking between my sewing machine and my ironing board. Quilting: it's good for your health and stamina.

Usually I'm doing my quilting first before anything else, but I really wanted to finish off the challenge piece, and so I started there. Smitty helped me sandwich it for quilting.

I found an appropriate piece of batting right away and then readied it go to under my needle.

Four different variegated threads were considered for the quilting. The Retired Resident Engineer helped me select this one. This peachy-pink variegated thread is brought to you by my quilting fairy godmother, Ila, who always makes sure I have the exact color thread I need. Thank you, Ila.

The motif I wanted to quilt was already decided, but I needed a round template to get me started. Glancing around the sewing room, I spied this lid on a jar of buttons. It was exactly what I needed.

I used my hera marker to crease a circle that would be my stitching guide.

And then I stitched a stylized sun in each of the four open spaces toward the middle of the quilt.

Around the edges, I did a half sun.

At the four corners, I stitched a quarter sun.

It wasn't long before it was ready for a binding. It's hard to see the quilting on the back, but here it is anyway.

Next, I sewed the binding on by machine.

As I was finishing off the two binding ends, Sadie piped up:

Purrdon me...may I take purrsession of the cut-off ends?

Sure, Baby. No reason to save those little bits. With my help, we festooned her lovely furs with this fabric boa.

Ooooooh...I am feeling meowrvelous now. Nothing like some fashionable new appurrel to make a girl feel purretty all over.

Okay, and so the only thing left to do was to hand-sew the binding. When it was finished, it looked like this. It finishes at 25 x 25 inches.

Here's how it looks from the back.

Okay, and so then I got back to my quilt projects already in process. I finished quilting the main part of the Domestic Affairs quilt. Just the borders remain.

And, again, it's hard to see the quilting from the back, but here's a picture anyway.

Next, I'll quilt around the yellow inner border. I started a little upsy-downsy heart motif there and left it needle down. Depending on how long this takes, it's possible I could finish both borders today. I'm always careful with my wrist though, and so I won't know until I try it.

Also yesterday, I stitched the names and places for the next two Shop Hop blocks. I'll set those aside until that project comes back around.

And that means I'll be ready to get started on the next covered bridge for Grandpa's Bridges. And if, like me, you thought that bridge was crooked, not to worry. I straightened it out. It was seriously activating my leveling OCD.

I'll get back to working on the Shop Hop 3.0 quilt today. Possibly I'll finish this quilt top if all the remaining long seams don't bore me to death.

If I need something else to work on, I'll get busy finishing the little quilt top for Snow Happens.

It's another stay-at-home and sew day. Probably I should get outside and feed our hungry birds today, but otherwise, there's not much on the agenda. I'm loving these long sewing days. It might be the only good thing about winter.