Four Projects

Good morning, my friends. Our yesterday started out with a dense fog advisory. Before noon, the sky had cleared and it turned into a pretty nice day. I had some things to do around the house, but I got an early start on my sewing.

My first priority was to finish quilting the blocks for the Barnyard quilt. It was hard to know what to do on some of these blocks. For a few of them, I simply put my needle down somewhere and then let my hands decide what to do. This one, for example...picking some points I can sew to...what if I sew a triangle right here?

And what if I sew another one right beside it?

And what if I just go all the way around like that?

That seemed like enough quilting, and so I finished off the door and the roof.

Well...I forgot to take a picture of the back of that one. But, moving on...How about this one? What should I do here?

I like how those lines radiate out from the center of the star. Here’s how it looks from the back.

And then…one more. I puzzled over this one the longest. If I make a shape large enough, I can always fill in the middle with more lines or with something else. For these quilt blocks, I wanted all straight lines.

Here’s how that looks from the back.

Today I’ll go to work on the horizontal sashings. I have an idea what to do there, and I might decide to add in some curves in the sashings and in the borders. Today’s goal will be to finish the horizontal sashings, although I have no idea if that’s a realistic goal. If it is, I’ll work on the vertical sashings tomorrow. After that, I’ll just have the outer border to finish.

Next, I wanted to fix the tail on the kitten. This is how it looked when I showed it to you in yesterday's post.

I didn't like the way the tip of the tail faded into the background, and so I switched that piece out to the darker color.

And then I added the handle. Only when I uploaded this picture, I realized I made the handle wrong. I'm going to have to fix that. There were supposed to be two flippy corners at the top to round off the corners there. Oy. I have a love-hate relationship with this project. The blocks are very cute. I still hate making them. The design is clever, but there are so many ways to make mistakes with them. I think I sewed every seam wrong as I was making this one, even though I’ve made this same block many times before.

Here are the ten blocks I have for this quilt so far, but I'll have to fix the handle in the upper right.

From there, I made the back for the Scrappy Plus block. I wasn't trying to match up the design where the seam landed, but it worked out anyway. Just a happy accident.

And then...I finished the quilt top for my Sashiko piece. Here's a peek for you.

I’m pretty happy with how this is turning out. Now I’m kind of excited to show it to you. The subject of my design has special significance, and I’m glad it worked. (I had my doubts as I was stitching it.) It still needs to be sandwiched for quilting, although I’ll keep the quilting to a minimum. After that, it’ll just need a binding. It’ll finish up at 15 x 17.5 inches. Reveal is November 1st…coming right up.

So I’ll do my slow-stitching project this morning, and I’ll continue on quilting the Barnyard project.  In the basement sewing room, I’ll fix the kitten’s cup handle, and then I’ll try to get the Sashiko  piece to hand-sewing the binding. I can always count on the sewing room to serve as my boredom-prevention zone.

I’m still waiting for the pattern to start the Fantastic Feline kitten panel project I’ve set aside. The pattern was coming from Iowa, and it was mailed on Monday (I’m told). It seems like it should have been here by now, but what do I know? It’s a crazy world out there right now. If it hasn’t arrived by Monday, I’ll check in again. 

Okay. Off I go. Happy Saturday, Everyone!