For Chicago and Philadelphia

Good morning, my friends. As I look out the window, I see blue sky. The sun is just coming up, and it's looking like it'll be a pretty nice day today. Mike will be spending the afternoon in the dentist's chair. All I can say is better him than me. I had my day last month. It was cold and gray yesterday, but I still got outside to clean up the herb garden a little bit. A naughty gopher dug a trench all along the sidewalk that lines the garden, and so we've ordered more gopher stakes for him. They emit a buzz that is annoying to gophers, and that'll fix his little red wagon. If he had a wagon. Which I highly doubt.

There was plenty of time for sewing yesterday, and I was able to finish off two more blocks for the Northern Wilderness project. First, I needed to finish making the background for the bear block.

When the applique was finished, I turned my attention to the top-stitching. I started with the eagle. I'm using a monofilament thread and a 60/8 microtex needle to stitch along the edges of the applique. It was slow going with so many nooks and crannies.

Smitty helpfully held the bear down while I worked with the eagle. He wanted me to remind you that he wrestled some bears while we were in Alaska, and this one was a total pushover.

When the eagle was finished, I worked on the bear. By day's end, both were finished.

Here are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

And that brings me to the end of my list of WIPs. Next I'll move to the "Quilter's Choice" section of my white board. In this case, I'll be starting the next challenge quilt for The Endeavourers art quilt group. The prompt is "Motion." As a reminder, these are my fabrics:

The project I'm working on really requires full-width folded off-the-bolt fabrics. I'm working with scraps and fat quarters, which means I'm going to have to be creative with my piecing. I'll end up with seams where I don't want them in order to get the length I need. That will be undesirable, and so I'll have to replace those sections with whole pieces. It'll all make sense when I can reveal it next February. It's a long time to wait, I know.

My Embroidered Garden is progressing faster than expected. Probably I should be thinking about tracing the next 12 motifs for the Tiny Treasures project.

And how could I not make good progress with such a faithful foot warmer by my side.

So today will be much the usual fare. I want to get in a workout, and I have a housekeeping task on the day's calendar. Aside from that, it'll be mostly sewing. Just now it's time for some breakfast, and so I'll leave you to your day. I hope it's a good one.