Quilting Row by Row

Good morning, my friends. I'm writing extra fast this morning because I have an early appointment with a new dermatologist. My dermatologist of some 35 years retired a couple of years ago. I've been seeing another doctor, but I haven't really felt comfortable with her. Now I'm switching. It's hard getting in with a specialist as a new patient, but I managed to score a July appointment, when his new patient appointments were booking out until December. I hope I like him. It's just a routine skin check...nothing to worry about. Hopefully, I'll come home with all my skin intact.

So, let's just get right to it, shall we? Yesterday morning I stitched most of the bottom of the Love Sampler.

Now, I’ve moved my hoop up to encompass the last of it. I won’t finish it this morning, but tomorrow isn’t out of the question.

After that, there was a garden to hoe and flower pots to water. After lunch, I was able to get back to my quilting. Smitty was there to make sure I didn’t move the quilt too quickly. He wants to see nice, even stitches.

One block was stitched the day before, but I was able to finish up the rest of the row yesterday.

Here’s a peek at the back. 

This quilt has five rows. With one row done, I’ll have four days to quilt the remaining rows. Then, I’ll spend a day on the horizontal sashings and another day on the vertical sashings. That means I could have it to binding stage in about a week. For now, I left it needle-down in the next row down from the one I’ve already quilted. There should be some time to work on it today.

From there, I finished the third block for Where the Cows Come Home. When I left off the day before, I’d created the barn on a pressing sheet. Yesterday, I fused it to the background and added in the details.

The tree had some scraggly branches extending from the applique trunk. I made a copy of the placement diagram, and then traced the branches onto the fabric, as I do for embroidery.

Then I used my machine’s triple stitch and also the regular straight stitch to machine stitch the branches on the tree. After that, just the top-stitching was left, and the block was finished.

These are the three blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Smitty helped me tidy up at the end of the day. He’s a stickler for organization and cleanliness.

If there’s time for sewing today, I’ll get to work on the next block for Across the Wide Missouri. These are the two blocks I have for this quilt so far.

Recall that these blocks honor women who traveled across the prairie with westward expansion of the United States. The next block will honor Kate Carmack. I haven’t read much about her yet, so I’ll say more as I get to work making the block.

All right. I have a doctor’s appointment this morning, and then we’ll meet up with Erik and Mae for an early dinner tonight. With the change in our phone service, we have new phones to hand off to them. (We have a family plan.) It’ll be good to see them. We’re seeing them again on Thursday when we’ll all get together for dinner. Matthew will be with us for that too. We haven’t all been together since April, and so it’ll be nice to see everyone.

Okay, my friends. With that, I must be on my way. Busy morning ahead. Have a good day, Everyone!