Busy Days Ahead

Good morning, my friends. We're expecting a drenching downpour today. The forecast is for three inches of rain over the next 12 hours. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, a big wind blew through the night before. With so much rain ahead of a big wind, it meant a lot of downed trees in our area...none where we live, fortunately, but we've had our share in previous storms. I believe the wind has died down now. Our forecast shows rain every day for the next week. I'd say it's time to get outta Dodge, and we will...in just about ten days. Between now and then, there's a lot to do...planning, cooking, and packing. I'll admit it's weighing on me, but it's too soon to start any of that just yet.

So let's not jump out there ahead of ourselves, okay? For now, we'll just relax with our slow-stitching. Yesterday started with the stitching of Tiny Treasure #29.

That was easy enough. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday on this next project. It's one more I'm adding to my take-along bins. One of my Facebook friends has a small collection of nativity scenes. She'd posted some pictures online, and we chatted back and forth a bit about her love of nativity scenes. (I've always loved them too.) The next time a Pinterest email landed in my inbox, this scene was included. 

Now here's the thing: I simply must sew. And if I kept everything I made, I'd have to add another room to our house in which to store all of it. So, when I see something I consider a perfect project to make for someone else, the devious part of my brain pipes up: "Ooooh....you could make this for fill-in-the-blank!" And when I saw this, I thought of my friend and said, "Ah ha! I believe I've identified my next victim!"

So, I visited the site where it originated. It was designed for machine embroidery, but I wanted to do it by hand. Did they have a hand-embroidery option? No. Of course not. Silly me. So I went searching for other possibilities, but I didn't find anything I liked better than the original. Then, I had an idea: I purchased the machine embroidery design, but then enlarged the picture that came with it for hand embroidery. I printed it on a sheet of Sticky Fabri-Solvy, and voila! A good machine embroidery design goes to the dark hand-stitching side. 

And then I went searching through my stash for some fabrics I could use to make a little quilt from it. Also, I had some blue embroidery floss left over from another project. Probably there's not enough here, but I can get more if I need to. 

As for the fabrics on the left, I'll make a narrow inner border from the lower one. That will also make a good binding. Then I'll use the dark blue in the middle for an outer border, and I'll use the star fabric at the top on the back. Now I'm excited to get started on it. Probably I'll start on this when I finish the Tiny Treasures.

And, of course, it needed its own project bag. Digging through my bag of bags, I came out with this one that was a gift on the day I visited Rosie's Calico Cupboard in San Diego, California. That was a good day. I met up with my blogging friend, Darlene. I was freshly burdened with a broken shoulder and a broken thumb at the time. Darlene helped me haul my purchases around. (Thanks, Darlene.) Anyway...this bag sparked a good memory.

Sadie found all this prepping and bagging terribly boring. She was there to help, but she finally gave up and decided to take a nap.

She told me I'd procrastinated long enough. I needed to sew the Shop Hop 4.0 blocks together. Done.

And then I had to decide how to finish it off. I'd already pulled the fabric you see on the left below. It's the cut off ends from another finished quilt, and I have a good amount for the outer border. It sort of makes sense with the barns, silos, and quilt shops pictured, since those are also things I photograph in our travels. For the inner border, I was torn between the two fabrics you see there.

After mulling it over a bit, I decided on the red one. I thought it would zazz up the quilt a little, and it will also make a good binding. Before I finished for the day, I had the two side borders done.

The top and bottom borders are ready to be sewn on now, and that's where I'll start when I make my way to the sewing room tomorrow.

Okay, so I started this post whining about the things I need to do to get ready for our trip. And when I'm thinking about that kind of stuff, it makes me terribly lazy...or maybe I'm just pre-tired. Anyway, I didn't get in my Bowflex workout yesterday, but I will today. No excuses. Also, I need to make up a shopping list. We'll do our grocery shopping tomorrow. If I play my cards right (read that: make a good shopping list), we can avoid going again until we're down in Southern California. I'll have some cooking to do ahead of time, but our first week of travel will mostly consist of eating leftovers I'll bring from the freezer. 

And consider this my reminder to myself that I cannot cross the state line with citrus fruits. I hate to think how many times I've forgotten that until we're already packed and ready to go. Our neighbors have benefitted from my poor planning several times, as I've tried unloading bags of oranges, lemons, and limes just before taking off. And all of that to say that I'll be planning our menu and making a grocery list today. Grocery shopping will happen tomorrow. All you need to know is that tomorrow's post will probably appear later in the day.

With that, I'm off to enjoy our rain-drenched Thursday. When we chat tomorrow, I'm hoping I can show you a finished quilt top.