Prep Work

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to Monday. It was a busy and lazy day yesterday. I had baking to do for our dinner with the neighbors last night. My first stop of the day was to bake this Skillet Cherry Cobler for Two (times two). This was one of my mother's friend's recipes, and I've scaled it down to one-third its original size so that I can bake it in a 6-inch cast iron skillet. 

I've linked to the recipe back there. If you want dessert for a crowd, you can triple the recipe (using 3 cans of cherries), and bake it in a 9 x 13 pan. That's the way my mother made it. It can also be made using canned peaches.

Okay, so I'll finish Grandpa's Bridges this morning. I might have finished it yesterday, but I was getting tired of stitching. For sure I'll finish it today. That meant I needed some other stuff to stitch on. I decided to return my attention to the disappointing 2025 "Sewing Room" project started by Jenny of Elefantz, but discontinued when she closed down her blog. (Sigh.) I've been mulling over what to do about the blocks I have already. 

I like the embroidery for this project, but I've never been happy with the pieced blocks. As some of you have pointed out, the colors are too bright for the delicate embroidery. So, I've decided to add the pieced blocks to my zip-lock bag of orphan pieces. I keep zip-lock bags of orphans and cut-off bits from half-square triangles. They make good projects to take along when we head south for the winter. There is limited space for sewing in our fifth wheel, but I can fiddle around with these and turn them into something fun. Here are a couple of examples of quilts I've made from those cut-offs and orphans. I like to refer to them as my "Trashy Series."

Trashy Triangles:

Broken Hearts:

Waste Not Whatnots:

I had fun with the quilting on that one.

Also, Chicken Feed:

Those were all fun to put together from my "leftovers." I can turn those pieced blocks from Jenny's project into something fun too. I just need to spend some time messing with them. And nothing says I can't cut them into something else. 

For now, I decided to finish off the sixth embroidered block. Jenny's looks like this:

She's doing needle-turn applique. I decided long ago that needle-turn applique is to fiddly for my sewing room. It's pretty, but I'm sticking with machine applique for my projects. So I considered how to make that little patchwork quilt, and decided on a method. I first selected eight fabrics and cut them into 1-1/2 inch squares. Then I sewed them together patchwork style.

When it was sewn together, I needed to trim 1/4 inch off the edge all around. Then, I added some Heat 'n Bond to the back and fused it to the background piece.

She "hand quilted" hers with embroidery stitches. 

If I were quilting an actual quilt like this, I'd use a diagonal grid, and so that's what I did here. When that was finished, I traced the remainder of the embroidery design onto the background piece. I'll get started on the stitching today or tomorrow.

That isn't going to take very long, and so it also seemed like a good idea to prepare a block for "Home is Where My Flock Is." As it turns out, I selected this pattern to fill in an opening on my embroidery dance card. I thought I'd started it, but apparently not. As you might know, Crabapple Hill Studios is no longer. She retired this past spring and shut down her website with a nice 50% off of everything sale. I've made many of her patterns, and so I wasn't really in the market for anything. Still, this one caught my eye, and so I decided to buy it.

These are the floss colors I'll be using:

After studying the pattern some, I traced out the first block. Cute.

Nothing was finished on my Shop Hop blocks. Nevertheless, as long as I was in a tracing mood, I decided to trace the next two shop names and places. When the Shop Hop project comes around again, I'll be ready with the embroidered pieces I'll need.

And I didn't get a single cat helping me in the sewing room yesterday. I found Sadie hiding underneath the covers upstairs.

Smitty was snoozed out in his favorite napping chair.

So today will look a lot like yesterday. I need to do some more baking. We need some muffins for our morning pre-breakfast snack. There's one housekeeping chore to do, and then I can get started on the next Shop Hop blocks. 

If I can get those finished, I'll be starting another new project...this one I purchased just before we left for Alaska called Northern Wilderness.

When the pattern arrived back in May, I decided to start on it when we returned from Alaska. And now, its time has come. 

You might recall I purchased some backing fabric at Bear's Paw Quilts in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Sadie really likes this fabric.

So I have a head start with the backing fabric. Now, all I need to do is make a quilt top to go along with it!

Okay, so there's plenty to do. Time to get going. How's your week going so far?