More Sewing

Good morning, my friends. It was another day spent at the RV yesterday, and so I got out my sewing machine and did a little more sewing. Before that, I took the first stitches on the Sashiko piece.

I ended up using my own needle for this, but I might try one of the larger needles included with the kit. The floss I'm using is labeled "Sashiko" floss. It's about the thickness of a Perle cotton, but it feels more like yarn. I've cut a length about 14 inches, which is what I usually do, but possibly the smaller eye on my needle is causing it to fray as it passes in and out of the fabric. I'll try the larger needles and see if that helps any. I have my doubts, but it's worth experimenting.

When I had the sewing machine set up and everything else strewn about, I was able to finish off Block 12 of the Raggedy & Friends project. Sadly, I cut that bottom stitchery wrong. I was trimming it to the right size, and failed to notice I had the block rotated 90 degrees when I made the first cut. 

So the stitching ended up off-center. My first reaction was to call it a big "Oh well." Then, last night I got an idea to stitch some more hearts on the left side. I think that will work out fine, and no one will be the wiser. Don't tell anyone, okay? And this section, like so many of the others, had stitching that ended up inside the seam allowance. You can see a little bit of that running stitch at the bottom. I'm going to take out the visible parts of the running stitch while I'm at it. If I can't see the whole line of stitching, then I don't want any of it to appear. By adding hearts to the left side, it'll also help with the off-centered appearance.

From there, we got Smitty out for a short walk.

That lasted all of about five minutes, and then I went back to my sewing. Next up, I wanted to make the remaining ten blocks for the Gumballs project. First, I made twenty 4-patches.

And then, I made 40 half-square triangles.

Making the HST's and then trimming them took forever. By the time they were trimmed, I'd used up all the time in my sewing day.

With those sections made, sewing the blocks together should go pretty quickly. The remaining pieces are cut and labeled. It's a matter of laying them out and sewing them together.

So I might get more sewing done before we leave Escondido, or I might pack it all up and start up again when we reach Boulder City. We were expecting some sunshine today. Looking out as I'm writing, it looks pretty cloudy. We have a plan to visit the San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas today. If the clouds don't clear off, we may change our plans. For now, that's our agenda. If we decide to do something else, then it's anybody's guess. We have meetings set up with friends tomorrow and Wednesday. Thursday will be our last day in Escondido.

That's all I have for you today, and with that, I'll leave you to your day. Make it a good one, okay?