41 Years Ago Today

Good morning, my friends. It's a red letter day at the Three Cats Ranch. Please join me in wishing a very happy 41st birthday to this handsome young man.

Matthew is my youngest, but don't let his age fool you into thinking I'm old. See, I have a strategy for staying young. When I reached the age of 50, I started counting backwards. At this point, I'm just 30, and so it's something of a miracle to have a child older than I am. Yeah. That's my story. 

A couple of years ago, his birthday was the inspiration for the "Feelings" quilt. That was a good day.

We had grocery shopping to do yesterday, but our list was relatively short. We happened to hit our senior discount day, and so the store was full of old people. Despite being with a group of questionable shopping cart drivers, we were in and out well before lunch time. That left plenty of time in the day for sewing.

I've started rounding the borders for Jericho Walls. I'm doing a loopity loop design (technical quilting term), first with large loops, and then going over it again with smaller loops. It creates a secondary diamond shape in the middle. It's easy to stitch...always appreciated.

After stitching across this long border...twice...I decided one border per day was my limit. So far so good getting through this large quilting project without making my wrist and elbow hurt. There's no rush, and so I'm taking my time. I left it needle down at the second corner.

Today I'll stitch across the second side. At this rate, I should have it to binding stage by the weekend.

Moving into the sewing room, I had lots of kitty help. Smitty volunteered to trace the next blocks for Raggedy & Friends.

Sadie was more interested in helping make the scrappy inner border for The Story of My Day.

We started with the final two blocks for the Raggedy & Friends project.

Now it has its own two bins...a smaller one for the embroidered block I'm working on, and a larger one to contain the entirety of the project. (This is how I store all my projects.)

From there, I went to work cutting strips 1-3/4 inches wide to make the final two inner borders for The Story of My Day. When I had this many cut, I decided to start sewing them together.

Although I was certain I'd need more, I already had way more length than I needed. That was all well and good because I can use those scraps in the pieced borders to come. For now, I finished the day with all four inner borders attached.

Next, I'll start sewing together the four outer borders. My experience making the quilt blocks tells me that these will be a little bit of a puzzle to sew together. Here's the diagram from the pattern.

Here's a picture of the finished quilt.

You'll note I'm also including the windmills. There are two sizes of these. Yesterday, I copied the templates, and I'll use these to trace the fusible. If memory serves there were something like 12 large ones and 9 small ones. (I forget.) 

In any case, these four borders are going to take a while to sew together. And since it's time for goal-setting, I'm committing to sew The Story of My Day into a finished quilt top as my goal for

So I have a busy agenda for today. I want to take a walk on the treadmill, and I have one housekeeping chore to do. Since all the blocks for Raggedy & Friends are traced now, I can move on to my other embroidery projects. First, I'll want to create an embroidery block for April's "Sewing Room" project. These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

I'm coming down the home stretch with the ninth block for Grandpa's Bridges. It will probably be finished in the next day or two. That means I'll want to trace the next three blocks for "S" is for Sew. These are the blocks I have for that quilt so far.

Finally, I'll want to make up April's block for Kittens in Cups. April's color is teal. I'll be making another kitten with a tail, and so I'll strive to make this one look like Smitty. (January's block was supposed to be Smitty's block, but that was before I realized the second block had a tail. And Smitty's tail is so lavishly long and beautiful, it needs a place of honor on the quilt. Besides, Sadie's tail is already represented. Smitty's tail needs equal time. These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Okay, so obviously, I won't get all that done today. It's just a preview of coming quilting attractions. Right now, I'm thinking breakfast sounds good, and then I'll get on with my busy day.

It seems a good time to tell you that I've considered a new way to get in my political digs in a way that allows those who disagree to opt out ahead of time. We're in unprecedented times, my friends. Since blogging is my way of writing a letter to friends, I've always included whatever happens to be on my mind on a given day. Like many of you, I wake up each morning wondering what the next travesty will be. Realizing that some would like to avoid controversy, I'm going to give a visual warning to anyone who wants to opt out. (And no hard feelings.) When the mood strikes on any given post, I'll keep it for the end of the day's writing. If I'm about to say something to which others might disagree or take offense, I'll warn you when I'm going to get on my soapbox with this visual:

Today I have just one thing to say: Thank you, Wisconsin friends. You've given many of us reason to hope.