A Regular Day

Good morning, my friends. It was good to have a day without the burden of a dreaded procedure on my mind. We did our grocery shopping, and I felt light as a feather. Now we're probably good with food for at least a week, and I can focus on the things I enjoy. Smitty is all about it. When I came into my office this morning, I found him ready to be my copy editor. He took a short nap while he awaited my arrival.

It's impurrtant to stay up-to-date with your beauty sleep...or, in his case, his handsomeness sleep.

When I made my way to the sewing room, my goal was to finish top-stitching and trimming the two most recent blocks for the Northern Wilderness quilt. My friend, Angie, asked me what kind of stitch I use when I do machine applique. For almost all machine applique, I'll use a cotton or rayon thread and my machine's blanket stitch. In another lifetime, I even wrote a tutorial about this.

This quilt is a little different. As I wrote in an earlier post, the written pattern suggested doing raw-edge stitching with monofilament thread. There are a lot of little nooks, crannies, and curves in the applique pieces. I considered doing my usual machine blanket stitch, but I'm afraid that will be too much thread. A blanket stitch would be too wide and "thread heavy" to look right. So, okay. I agree with the monofilament, and I decided to follow the pattern's lead for this project. It barely shows. You can see it in the image below. I'm also using a microtex needle to avoid punching big holes in the applique.

When it was finished, I trimmed the block to 17-1/2 x 13 inches, and there it is:

Sadie helped me with the trimming.

And then, I finished off the Forget-Me-Not block in the same way. Forget-Me-Nots are Alaska's state flower.

All that top-stitching was a little tedious and tiring. Sadie decided to take a nap on the quilts-to-be-quilted pile. She's hoping I won't finish these any time soon because they make a nice, cushy napping spot.

And here are the blocks I have for this quilt so far. Four down, twelve to go.

So I gave myself another fairly easy day today. My to-do's are all in the kitchen. I'm going to roast the tomatillos I scored at the farmer's market on Saturday, and then measure out portions for making Enchiladas Suizas. Also, I want to make some herb-infused butter. If I'm remembering right, it's a Bowflex day, and so I'll probably do that. After that, I can spend the afternoon sewing.

For today's sewing adventure, I'll be starting on this new project called Stair Steps. My plan is to make this quilt one row at a time. There's going to be a lot of cutting for this project. 

The little squares are all 2-1/2 inches. It'll make good use of my scraps, but all that cutting can make my wrist hurt. I'm thinking I'll try putting a splint on my wrist to see if that can help. But first...slow-stitching. I'm making good progress on my harvest pumpkin. Probably I'll have it finished by week's end.