Four Down

Good morning, my friends, and Happy May Day to you!

May Day is made more special here at the Three Cats Ranch because it's also our DIL Mae's birthday. Happy Birthday, Mae!

It was an exhausting day yesterday. As you are probably well aware, I started the arduous task of sandwiching 17 quilts for quilting over the next several days. My goal is to do four per day. Day 1 finished with four down, 13 to go. And if you're good at math, you know there's one extra in that calculation. If I haven't done five in a day before the end of tomorrow, then I'll do five on the last day...Sunday. As I go, I'm moving from the largest among them to the smallest. The smaller ones are easy enough that five in a day should be no sweat.

First of all, I think it's important to be properly attired regardless of the job at hand. For canning, I always don my special canning t-shirt:

For sandwiching quilts, I donned this t-shirt I picked up when we visited Missouri Star Quilt Company several years ago.

The funny thing about this t-shirt is that people often notice it, especially quilters. I've actually had people (complete strangers) ask to stand beside me for a picture on two occasions. 

Okay, so now that I was properly attired, I could get going on this. I started with the Merry, Merry Snowmen. It'll be the first one I start quilting. If I can finish early enough today, I might start quilting it today. It would ordinarily be farther down the line for quilting, but a friend has asked for this one, and so I want to get it finished up for her.

Starting with the largest, the Cats in Pajamas were next. This was my 2024 Rainbow Scrap Challenge project. The yellow cat with the striped tail is Smitty. The red cat to his right is Sadie with her stubby tail.

Next was this Homestead quilt. This was my project for the 2023 Rainbow Scrap Challenge. These blocks were inspired by the Discovery Quilt Trail pamphlet I was given when we visited the Homestead National Historic Park in Beatrice, Nebraska. This is my oldest WIP, and so it'll be next under my needle when the Merry, Merry Snowmen are finished.

Fourth and last for the day, the Raggedy & Friends project that was finished just recently. Of the quilts I'm sandwiching, this will be second to last on the list to be quilted. 

Okay, and so I'm ready to get started again today. The next four are also large quilts, and so the day will be tiring again. It might have been an easier day yesterday had I not decided to take a walk on the treadmill first. Also, the garage is on the ground floor level (obviously), and my sewing room is in the basement. Since all the quilts are in the basement, and since they all needed to be ironed before they could be sandwiched, I'd estimate I ran up and down the stairs about 4,176 times yesterday. It was just one more reason to be completely worn out at the end of the day yesterday.

There's less on today's schedule: one easy housekeeping chore, watering the annuals, and doing my PT exercises. I've been doing my other tasks between each quilt to give myself a little break and to allow my body to move in different ways. Happily, I had almost no shoulder pain while I was doing this yesterday. The PT really is working. 

So next, I'll get busy with my slow-stitching. After that, I'll get busy with the quilts again. I'm hoping it won't take the whole day as it did yesterday.