Picking Up the Pace

Good morning, my friends. Its been nice to indulge in the peace of some slow days over the past week. With Mike’s cataract surgeries, and my asthma attack of the previous week, it was good to have a breather. (Pun totally intended.) Yesterday morning, I started on a new embroidery piece. This is Block 8 of 9 for the Le Jardin project. Not much color so far, but it’s coming.

From there, I took a short break and filled the bird feeders. Then I returned to the same chair as before and went to work on my quilt binding. There was more progress than expected on this. I’ve managed to turn the first two corners. This won’t be finished today, but tomorrow isn’t out of the question.

The grocery list was made up while I ate some lunch, and I got in quick nap. When I woke up there was still plenty of time in the afternoon for  the Hawksbill Honu quilt. I’ve been looking forward to this. It was my second attempt at Sashiko. The first was this little quilt I made for one of the art quilt challenges.

This one, Hawksbill Honu, was made from a kit. All I needed to do was to sandwich it, and then get to work on the quilting. At 21 x 24 inches, it’s a small piece, and so the quilting didn’t take long.

While I was setting up my domestic machine for quilting, Smitty gave it a quick inspection.  Satisfied, he gave me his purrmission to begin.

So I didn’t want the quilting to be obvious on this. I love the contrast of the white Sashiko against the dark background, and I didn’t want the quilting to distract from the turtle design. On either side of the turtle, I quilted a strip of kelp.

My internal debate in thinking about how to quilt this was knowing that things on the ocean floor float upward. What would I do in the narrower spaces running vertically across the top and bottom? The other challenge is simply doing something that I am capable of quiting. Since I can’t draw worth beans, my designs have to be pretty simple. I’ve had good luck searching for quilting designs by Googling “straight line drawing of [fill in the blank].” If someone else will draw it for me, then I’m pretty good at copying. The starfish was pretty easy. Probably, I could have done that on my own. And then I filled in below with some bubbles. I used different sizes of buttons to make round circles for the bubbles.

Here, I searched for a straight-line drawing of a seahorse, and I found one I could do pretty easily. I first drew it on the fabric in a white chalk pencil (invaluable), and then I stitched over it. The white chalk brushes away pretty easily.

I stitched another strip of kelp up the right side of the turtle, and then some more bubbles over the top.

The borders gave me the same trouble as before. Everything needs to be vertical if I’m sticking with ocean scenes as my inspiration. There was plenty I could do in the vertical borders, but what about the narrow space at the top and bottom? In the end, I decided to let the fabric tell me what to do. I thought I might try to do a straight line drawing of a turtle. Since the fabric already has turtles on it, it made sense to just outline those for texture. I outlined some of the other elements too, and connected them with a loop.

Here’s a peek at the back. I love that fabric.

So…all finished. I squared it up.

Today I’ll give it a purple binding. (And since I’m already hand-sewing a quilt binding, there’s no rush to get to this one.)

Probably I could have sewn the binding on, but I was getting tired of sewing by then. Instead, I looked ahead at my whiteboard. Next in line was to finish this little quilt made while we were traveling in SoCal this past winter. I call this quilt “Tulip Time.” It’s going to make a cute little spring table topper. When I looked at it, I realized it’s ready for quilting too.

For this, I’ll just cut a back for it…maybe select something for a binding…and then set it aside for when the next small quilt comes up on my whiteboard for quilting. I found the pink below in my stash. It seems as good a choice as any. There’s probably something suitable for a binding too, but I haven’t really looked.

Okay, so instead, I’ll finish this little project off somehow. It’s another little quilt I made on our winter trip. I call this “Bunny Bait.” It’s just a quilt block, but I have in mind to fancy it up somehow and make it into a little wall hanging. I’m pretty sure I have a fabric that will make a good border…that is, if I didn’t use it all up at some point in time. If I can’t find anything I like, I might have to go shopping. Wouldn’t that be just awful?

Okay, so like I said…we’re picking up the pace today. We got off easy with our grocery shopping last week. There were only a couple of things we needed. This week, the list is monstrously long. We have one other errand to run as well, but we’ll get our beloved Egg McMuffins first. The rest of the day will go so much better after a sumptuous fast-food breakfast. 

I’m hoping to get some sewing done this afternoon. For sure, I want to round another corner on my quilt binding. Getting the Hawksbill Honu to hand-stitching stage would be nice too. 

All righty then. Off I go. I have miles to go before I sleep.