Meeting of the Minds

Good morning, my friends. I'm a little bleary-eyed as I'm writing this morning. I woke up too early, and then couldn't get back to sleep. I've had worse early-awakenings, and so it's not all bad. And since I don't have to go anywhere today, it hardly matters. I'm sure a nap is in my future...maybe sooner than you might think.

It was a good sewing day yesterday. I sewed my guts out and got quite a bit done. The kitties and I had a meeting of the minds over the first challenge for Season 16 of Project Quilting: "Mythical Creatures." When I read the prompt, I had a lot of ideas. Of course, I first asked myself if there was some sort of mythical cat. There were actually quite I few cats in mythology, but none I thought I could make into a quilt in one week. I thought about a few other things: dragons, unicorns, mermaids, centaurs...nothing really struck me as something I wanted to make. Finally, and simply because it would be easy to do, I printed out an image of a Phoenix, reasoning that at least I could do it in a single week.

When I showed it to the kitties, they were kind of Meheow about it. We had a length discussion about whether this design was worthy of my attention.

You can see my print out in the image above and below. I'd thought about doing it in applique. I just needed to choose some fabrics. Sadie was unimpurressed.

So, I let them hash it out for a while. While they held a closed-door meeting, I went to work finishing off the borders for The Sewing Room embroidered block. The embroidery was completed the day before.

And then, I made three pieced blocks. That completes January's allotment for this project.

The kitties were still discussing ideas for the challenge project when I decided to get to work on the baby quilt I've promised to a friend. (A promise made is a debt unpaid, according to my father.) Smitty helped me line up my ruler for the cutting.

I'm using the free four-patch pattern from the Quilts for Kids website. I've made this quilt so many times, I could probably do it in my sleep. The baby's parents have requested green and beige. As a reminder, this is my focus fabric:

These are the pieces I'll need:

The kitties had settled on an idea for my challenge quilt by then. Smitty was exhausted after such a long day of meetings, and so he retired to his office in HR (He Rests). He's made a space for himself in my sewing room closet.

Sadie wasn't at all sure she was up to the task of making a baby quilt without his help, but she agreed to give it a try.

She loves it when I make a baby quilt. The "baby" designation makes her think it's a quilt for her.

The first step was to create 15 4-patches. Easy enough.

And then I sewed them into rows.

And then I added this peachy-pinky border. It's the same color as the little bit of pink in the focus fabric, although the lighting in my sewing room makes it look more peach than pink.

And then, I needed just one more border from the focus fabric. It took the better part of my afternoon, but when I turned off the lights for the day, I had a finished quilt top.

Now, the back and binding strips are cut. I'll use the same focus fabric on the back. Today's goal will be to sandwich and quilt it. Usually, I quilt these quilts with a straight-line diagonal grid, but I'm kind of tempted to do some dot-to-dot quilting for this one. I'd like to fancy up the borders a little bit, but I haven't decided for sure yet.

Okay, so finishing this quilt will be today's goal. It's doubtful I can finish both quilting and binding today, but I'm hoping to get it to hand-stitching stage. I'll be stitching what remains of "Bicycles and Lace" for the Girls' Getaway quilt, and my challenge quilt will also be almost exclusively hand-stitched. Add in this quilt binding, and I see many hours of hand-stitching ahead. I like hand stitching. The kitties like it too.

Okay, and so hand-stitching is next. I'll work some more on the Bicycles and Lace piece, and then I'll get started on my challenge piece. I'm keeping my challenge piece a secret until it's finished...hopefully in the next couple of days.