Handling It

Good morning, my friends. I’m up early this morning, having awakened during the 3:00 hour. Certain current events have me on edge, and it was hard to get back to sleep. I’m hopeful I can get in a few more hours when I finish here, but I have a doctor’s appointment this morning, and so there isn’t a lot of time to catch up on my usual hours of shut-eye. 

When I made my way into the sewing room yesterday, I had just one thing on my mind. I'd decided to fix the cup handle on the first of the Kittens in Teacups blocks. I believe these blocks will get easier to make now that I've made one of each. It helps to have a model to refer to. Sadie joined me. She doesn't like taking out stitches any more than anybody else.

She decided her best way of helping was to lie on her quilt and look pettable. I'll admit, I fell for it and petted her.

But enough of this lovey-dovey stuff, it was time to get to work. Originally, I wanted this to be a Smitty block. 

That was before I realized the second iteration of the kitten included a tail. So, I'll make another one of him the next time I make the block with the tail. His tail will be striped. For now, I was just remaking the cup handle for this. I only needed to remove the strip on the right side. When I had it all resewn together, it looked like this:

And then I laid the two blocks together for a group photo when I noticed...aargh! Oh, FFS. It's still wrong!!!

Pardon me for just a minute. I'll be right back. [Leaves room...screams into a pillow.] Okay, I'm back. Did I miss anything? That sound you heard? Oh, that was nothing.

So I took a second look at this and added the triangle on the far right. Now, it's right. Sheesh.

And there we go. Here are the two blocks I have for this quilt so far. I'm hoping it will get easier from here, now that I have the pieces labeled, and now that I've done one of each. Certainly it can't get any more confusing.

So next, I made the 6th of eight rows for the Lightframe quilt. These blocks go together pretty fast. When I had them sewn into a row, I laid them next to the remainder of the quilt top to make sure I had it all lined up correctly.

And that looks good, so I sewed it all into a whole. There are two more rows before I can call this a finished flimsy.

It was getting to be close to time for stopping. Before turning off the lights for the day, I prepared the February block for The Sewing Room. This is the free 2025 BOM from Jenny of Elefantz. The little scissors case is appliqued. And it's a little hard to see the tracing, so I've laid it next to the picture from the pattern.

When the stitching is finished, it will require borders, and then the addition of three pieced blocks. Here's how January's blocks look:

I'll get to work on this when I finished the current block for Grandpa's Bridges. I'm thinking I might finish it today or tomorrow.

So, I'm hoping to be home early and able to get some more sewing done. Next up will be to make two more pieced blocks for the Girls' Getaway quilt. These are the remaining two pieced centers. I'll add some half square triangles on the tops and bottoms of these.

These next two images are from the pattern cover. Sorry for the blur, but that's how it looks on the cover.

Those shouldn't take long, and then I'll make two more blocks for Shop Hop 4.0 These are the blocks I have for that quilt so far.

When those are finished, I will have reached the "Quilter's Choice" section of my whiteboard. The newest prompt for Project Quilting was "Common Blocks." It didn't excite me much, and so I'm not going to participate in that one. Instead, I'll do a project I've been wanting to do for several months. It means working on a quilt I made before I ever started blogging. I call this quilt "The Great Outdoors." I don't even have a very good picture of it:

It's the quilt I cover up with when we're watching television. It was the first flannel rag quilt I made, and I gave it only a quarter-inch seam allowance. Over time and several washings, those seams have frayed apart. And I love this quilt, but I'm afraid it's too fragile to wash at this point. One evening I was thinking I could simply cut smaller blocks from the larger ones, and then sew it back together with a half-inch seam allowance. The quilt is king-size, so if I cut the blocks to a smaller size, it will still be plenty big enough for the way I use it. 

Okay, so that's what's going on here at the Three Cats Ranch. I’m going to try to get a little more sleep before I must get on my way to see the doctor. I'm not expecting any bad news from her, so wish me luck. No news is good news where our health is concerned.