Bleats and Pleats

Good morning, my friends. Yesterday I was whining about the rain arriving just as I was preparing to drive a fair distance to a local quilt shop. As it turns out, the weather gods were merciful. I'll have a short window of dry weather for my drive today. I'm heading south to the Cotton Patch. It's "backing day" today. I can get a discount on backing fabric if I bring in my finished quilt top. I'll be showing up with the Scrappy Plus quilt top. 

It's been a while since I've been to the Cotton Patch, and they have a new location now. I'll be able to see their new shop while I'm at it. I'm also looking at fabrics to finish off my Sashiko piece. It should be a fun little outing.

And say good-bye to September, my friends. We'll be into October tomorrow. Fall color is showing up here at the Three Cats Ranch. When I sat down at my quilting machine yesterday, this is what I could see from my window.

In about a week or so, this tree will be bright red. From my other window, where I'm sitting right now, I can see this tree:

This one will turn a brilliant orange before it starts to drop its leaves.

So I had a housekeeping chore on yesterday's calendar. While I was at it, I imposed on Mike to help me hang a new quilt on the big wall downstairs. This is Calendula Patterdrip's Cottage. Since I'm putting out pumpkin and candy corn runners upstairs, I figure the downstairs should have some Halloween action too. This is the most complicated embroidered/pieced quilt I've ever made, and so it makes sense to display it on occasion.

Later in the afternoon, I was able to get back to my quilting. I'd been puzzling over how to quilt the doors and roofs for the barn quilt blocks. I wanted to do something that could be consistent from block to block. I finally settled on this dot-to-dot design. If I start at the middle of the seam on the left, I can do this section without cutting thread.

I tried to figure out a way to continue on to the roof without cutting thread, but I couldn't see a way that satisfied me. I finally decided to start a row of ziggedy-zaggedy stuff across that white strip in the middle, and then continue across the roof at the top. It's a little hard to see in this image, but the design ends up looking like upside-down kites.

Here's how that block looks from the back.

So I'll use the same design for all the roofs and the doors. Each quilt block will be a little different, but I'll continue on with the dot-to-dot style. It's a little tedious working with a ruler, but I'm only doing a small amount at each sitting. Here's the block to the left of the first one.

And here's the block to the right.

From there, I flipped it over to see the back. Here's where the bleating and pleating comes in. Good grief. I quilted a pleat into the back.

And then I bleated: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

Happily, there were only a few offending stitches there.

I took them out from the back where I could best see the area that needed repair. On top, you can see it was just a tiny bit. I ended up taking out the stitching until it reached the seam with the pink fabric. That gave me thread tails I could bury.

And then I carefully straightened and smoothed the back, and resewed that little bit. It isn't perfect, but it's good enough.

Here's how it looks from the back.

So that completed the first row of blocks. I'm not sure how I'll quilt this next one yet, but I left it needle down at the center.

Smitty helped from my desk on the far side of the room. A cat's work is never done.

So, I've already mentioned that I'm going to the quilt shop today. On my way home, I'll make a quick stop at the grocery store. I have just a short list of things we'll need to make it until next week. We'll do our big grocery shopping day next Tuesday, on senior discount day. That's also the day we're getting our COVID vaccines. I'm happy to say we were able to get into the study at our local teaching hospital. They're researching whether the side effects of a protein-based vaccine are any better tolerated than the current mRNA vaccine. We'll each be paid $40 just for getting the vaccine, and then another $80 each for filling out a daily diary for seven days noting any side effects. Not bad for a pretty simple job.

There probably won't be much time for sewing today, but most every morning starts with some slow-stitching. I finished the pumpkin yesterday.

It'll be set aside for the time being. I have a couple of other small quilt tops to finish first. Next up, embroidery-wise will be the 7th block for the Raggedy & Friends project...this one:

By rights I should be doing the 12th of 12 blocks for Grandpa's Bridges. I'm taking them out of order so that I can finish the Raggedy & Friends block before it comes up for piecing again. Also, I need to stitch the names and places for the final Shop Hop 4.0 blocks. When those two are finished, I'll get to work on Grandpa's Bridges.

Also on my stitching to-do's is to make October's Kitten in a Teacup. October's colors are blacks and browns. I've already selected my fabrics, but I'll see if there's anything I like better at the quilt shop. These are the blocks I have for that quilt so far.

Right now, it's time for some breakfast. I want to get an early start heading south to the quilt shop. The window of dry weather won't last long.