Misty Morning

Good morning, my friends. There was just a hint of fog when we opened the curtains this morning. And, honestly, for all I complain about the squirrels, it still makes me smile when I look outside and see one or more of them surveying the landscape. No doubt he's looking around for some mischief to get into.

First on my list yesterday was to get started stitching the next names and places for the Shop Hop quilt blocks. I was able to finish both of them.

From there, I took a walk on the treadmill, and then went to work baking these Carrot-Apple Muffins with Citrus Glaze. They make a good before-breakfast snack. They're not too sweet.

Next up, I traced out two more blocks for the Raggedy & Friends project. These were created by Kaaren Johnston. The drawings are so cute. This was a free BOM back in 2012, but it doesn't seem to be available any longer.

And then I'd dragged my feet as long as I could. It was time to start quilting Jericho's Walls. Getting started on a large quilting project is always difficult for me, and I end up making excuses all along the way for why I should wait until tomorrow. Once I get started, it draws me in and I want to keep going, but starting always seems like a big and heavy door to walk through. I can soften the blow by focusing on thread colors, machine maintenance, and that sort of thing. For this quilt, I'm using a black Bottom Line thread in the bobbin. The Bottom Line threads gave me tension troubles when I first started using them. Now, with practice, I'm better at adjusting the tension. Now, I like them. As a 60-weight thread, I can wind lots of thread onto a bobbin.

On top, I'll use this 50-weight black cotton thread. This is my usual go-to thread. This quilt will have a solid black binding, and so I know I'm going to hate myself when I start hand-stitching the black binding with black thread. (And when I'm talking about the binding before even beginning the quilting, you can see that I'm a very optimistic quilter.)

And...wow. This quilt really had me stumped. I sat looking at this block for at least half an hour, tracing designs with my finger tip to see what I could do that wouldn't drive me crazy. And with it being such a large and heavy quilt, I didn't want to get too fancy either. Nothing was coming to me, and so I went to Facebook and found the Stash Buster Challenge group where the original block challenge was posted. This was their 2022 challenge. Doing a search for "2022," I was able to find what other people had done. I found a motif I thought I could do, and then went to work. And...ta-da! After so much teeth-gnashing over this, it was surprisingly easy to stitch.

 

Here's how it looks from the back. Happily, that first block landed on a solid fabric, making it easy to see.

And then, I just stitched across that whole row of five blocks.

So, let's take another look at this quilt. Just looking at this, I realize I have the quilt rotated 90° on the machine, so that I've quilted the vertical row that is third from the left. I'd actually intended to stitch the rows horizontally, but with such a big quilt, I got myself turned around.

So, I'll just keep it going in the direction I'm going. Next, I'll be quilting the next row to the right, which is the center vertical row. You can see that some rows have five blocks, and some have four. I'll do them one row at a time (trying not to hurt myself). At a row per day, I expect to have this quilt finished within two weeks. I've left it needle down at this yellow block, and that's where I'll start today.

And the quilting won't take all of my sewing time, and so when my one row allotment is complete, I'll start sewing together The Story of My Day quilt top. These are all the blocks I have for this quilt.

The kitties were no help at all yesterday. When I went downstairs, I found them lounging in the day's last rays of sunshine.

When he'd soaked up all the sunshine available, he retired to his catio to gaze upon his terrortory.

After dinner, I went outside to fill the bird feeders. And oh my gosh! The daffodils are blooming!!!

Here's another one over here. So far, I'm not seeing any of the newest colors, but I'm sure we'll be seeing them soon enough.

Also, I can see petals showing on the Star Magnolia.

There are more over here. These are some of the prettiest flowers in the garden. Sadly, they are easily bruised by the rain. I expect we'll see some open flowers today, but they won't last long with rain returning by tomorrow. I'll have to keep sharp to get a picture of them when they open today.

Also, I noticed the Bleeding Heart is showing signs of life. We had one up closer to the house, but it didn't return last spring. When we replaced our composite roof with metal a few years ago, the winter snow started sliding off the roof and piling up in many-feet-high drifts all around the house. The poor Bleeding Heart was buried and smashed too many times, and it finally gave up the ghost. Now, we have this new one planted out of harm's way. It was only replaced last spring, and so I'm happy to see it survived the winter.

So I'm moving along with my next embroidery project. This morning, I'll start on this 9th of 12 blocks for Grandpa's Bridges.

Our local feed store has a one-day sale going on today on wild bird seed, and so we want to go into town and take advantage of the reduced prices. (Wild bird seed can be expensive!) And no trip into town is complete unless we stop off at the grocery store to pick up the stuff that's accumulated on our list. So I'll be off now...I need to eat some breakfast and get in some stitching time. There's another busy sewing day ahead of me. Also, I'm itching to get outside and do some yard work. I might not have time to do everything I want to do today, so it's best I get started now.