Quilted Eggs

Good morning, my friends. How is spring treating you so far? So far here, at the Three Cats Ranch, it still looks like winter. And it's cold. But we're expecting some very nice weather next week. If the forecast is to be believed, we'll have at least one day in the 70's next week. Yay! Some warmer weather will be very nice.

As it is, I'm stuck inside...slow stitching. Yesterday had me finishing off the Rosemary block.

My only housekeeping task for the day needed to be done in the kitchen, but Mike was there doing some repair to our dishwasher. It seems as if it's one thing right after another with things breaking down lately. Our dishwasher was new in 2008. Obviously, in 2025, it's beginning to show its age. The mechanism that eases the door down gently when it's opened has broken. We have to hold onto it (and it's surprisingly heavy) to prevent it from banging down hard when it's opened. Mike slid it out and took a look at things and discovered a small plastic piece that was broken. And now that he's a 3-D printing buff, he simply made a new one and then put the thing back together. Yay!

Admittedly, I dragged my feet a little bit getting into the sewing room. My first tasks there were to make a back for the Easter Egg table runner (one of my not-favorite things). And then I needed to sandwich it for quilting. As I've stated many times, sandwiching is my least favorite part of quilting. Sadie was there to help make the back.

It fit neatly on my ironing board, and I could use bicycle clamps to hold it in place. That made the sandwiching bit easier than expected.

Sadie was so excited when the sandwiching was completed, she was stricken with a case of The Adorables and fell over in a heap.

My friend, Anonymous, suggested using the fancy stitches on my sewing machine to quilt the eggs. The pattern made a similar suggestion, and that seemed as good an idea as any. I used a sort of tulip vine on the first one. Pink thread was selected for contrast.

Since I had pink thread loaded on the machine, I decided to do this zig-zag egg next. A repeating "plus" shape seemed like a good choice for this. They don't always stitch out exactly as they appear on the machine's computer screen. Possibly, stitching through batting throws them off. Or maybe I'm just going to fast...I don't know. In any case, this looks good enough to me. It looks a little like the state of Texas...or maybe I'm the only one that sees it. You know...Texas...down by the Gulf of Mexico.

Next, I used yellow thread to stitch this sort of flower vine.

Also with yellow thread, I did the spotted egg next. This motif is similar to the one above, but it omits the "vine" on either side of the flower. I was trying to center them, but the stitches don't start at the center, and that made it hard to guesstimate where I should start.

Here's what it looks like close-up.

The fancy stitches take a surprisingly long time to stitch, and that brought me near the end of my sewing day. I have this one egg left, and I'm still not sure how I'll quilt it. I could do some sort of dot-to-dot thing, or maybe just a straight line grid. I'm still making up my mind, but I'm leaning toward straight lines.

When that one is finished, I have in mind to stipple in the backgrounds and then stitch one straight line around the inner edge of the border. The binding will hold the outer edge in place.

So I'm hoping to get it to binding stage today. I'll take a look at my striped fabrics to see if anything jumps out at me. If not, I have enough of the dark blue left to make a binding.

It's a little bit of a busy day ahead. We're going to do some grocery shopping, and I'll finish off the housekeeping chore I put off from yesterday. Mike has gone back to bed, which means I have some time to take the first stitches on the Basil block before we need to head out. Right now, I'll eat some breakfast, and then I'll get to stitching.