Getting Back to Normal

Good morning, my friends. We have a pretty view of Mt. St. Helens this morning. We've been having some very nice weather, and we're expecting it to continue into next week. After last week's deluge, it's nice to see some blue sky and sunshine. And with what's happening in California right now, I'm not complaining about the rain...just acknowledging it. There are worse things than rainy days.

Sadie knows one thing that's worse than a rainy day...being unceremoniously captured, crated, and hauled off to the vet, where they do unspeakable things. Sadie is fine. She got a clean bill of health at her annual physical, and she is up-to-date on her vaccines now. We will have to provide proof of rabies vaccines for both kitties when we cross international borders this spring. Think of it as a kitty passport. Now they're both ready to go. 

When we were back home again, I went to work on my slow-stitching. The bicycles have been neglected for a few days while I worked on the Bigfoot piece. I was able to finish off the "Rosy Pink" bicycle yesterday...

And I took the first stitches on the aqua bicycle. It's the last one for this piece. There's still quite a bit to do, and so I don't expect to have it finished before next week sometime.

You might remember when I quilted this Dream Big Leaf panel. It was just for free-motion quilting practice and for fun. If you look closely at that picture below, you can see how it was rippled around the edges. It was quilted so densely that it wouldn't lay flat.

When it was finished, I hung it on my quilt rack with all the other quilts. When I put out my winter quilts after this past Christmas, I'd hoped to use it as a table topper on the dining room table. With so much rippling, though, it looked just terrible, and so I put it away with sadness. Then, I realized I just needed to block it, and I might be able to salvage it for use as a table topper or a wall-hanging. And so the urge struck me yesterday. I got out my cardboard cutting board (a gift from my mother when I was a teenager), and stretched and pinned the quilt to it.

It couldn't accommodate the entire width, but I pinned it where I could, and then gave it a good wetting down.

And then I went back to my quilting. When I arrived in the quilting room, I was happy to see that Smitty was already on the job, guarding against invaders.

I had three rows of blocks and a border to finish. I left the narrow pink border unquilted, and used a ribbon motif in the wider outer border.

When it was finished, I took it off the machine to have a look. 

Here's a little closer look at the quilting. All the blocks are quilted in the same way.

I wish the quilting on the back showed up better in the image below. I messed with the contrast and lighting, but it's still hard to see. Too bad because it's really pretty on the back.

And then I took it downstairs to square it up for binding. Smitty, with his eagle eyes, takes his duties as chief quilt inspector very seriously.

He used his tail to keep those unsewn binding strips under control. Strippers. What're you gonna do?

And that was the end of my quilting day. Today I'll sew that binding on, and then I'll probably spend most of the day finishing off the hand sewing.

When I went downstairs, and many hours later, the quilt was dry, and so I unpinned it and laid it out on the table. It still has a few little ripples, but it is vastly improved. I may decide to give it another try, but for now, I'll give it time and see if it flattens out even more on its own. Even if this is the best I can do, it's fine to use as a table topper now, and that makes me happy.

So it seems the day will be mostly hand-stitching today. I'll get back to the last bicycle and then I'll work on the quilt binding. On a quilt this size, 39 x 45 inches, I've been known to stitch the whole binding in a single day.

Also on today's agenda, I'll be baking some Carrot-Apple Muffins with Orange Glaze. Since the first of the year, I've been dieting, and so there's been no more baking. Mike and I started a serious diet back in 2017, and we both lost a good amount of weight. As anyone who's ever tried to lose weight knows, there are always the inevitable plateaus of weight loss where nothing seems to budge the number on the scale a single ounce. And when that happens, I get discouraged and lose my motivation to continue.

Since that initial weight loss, I've focused on trying to maintain my weight, and I've tried again twice (I think). Now I'm down to the final ten pounds to reach my goal. In the first week, I've lost two pounds. I'm hopeful I can get to the goal without hitting another stubborn plateau. And all of that to say these muffins are a relatively low-fat and low-calorie option. Mike has been whining about the dearth of any muffins, or tea breads, or biscotti to go with his morning coffee. Frankly, I miss that little morning snack too. So I'll make accommodations to my calorie count elsewhere, but I'm baking muffins today. Besides...I love baking, and I must bake something...sometime...somewhere. 

And that seems like a good place to stop. To my Southern California friends...oh my. I hope none of you are affected by the fires. I'm worrying about you guys. Please stay safe. 

Project Quilting 16.1: Mythical Creatures

 Good morning, my friends. Once again, I’m writing fast. Poor Sadie has to go to the vet this morning. There’s been no bloodshed so far, but one can never rule that out when Sadie is being transported somewhere against her very strong will. Honestly, for her size, she packs a punch. But, let’s not focus on that right now. I’m afraid she’ll be reading over my shoulder, and realize what’s in her future.

So it took me two days to finish my piece for the “Mythical Creatures” prompt. After thinking over several ideas, I decided to go with my final inspiration. I was reminded of this sign I saw on the main drag through the little mountain town of Idyllwild, California.

Doing some sleuthing online, I was able to come up with a design I thought I could hand stitch. All of Monday was spent stitching this piece I’m calling (not surprisingly) “Bigfoot Crossing.” In my initial wanderings, I was thinking of the mythical “Yeti,” and it just kind of morphed into Sasquatch and Bigfoot thing. Here’s how my piece looked when I finished the stitching near bedtime Monday evening.

The outer areas and areas that required more shading, I used three strands of black floss. The inner shaded areas are stitched with two strands. Then I used three strands and a stem stitch to stitch the words. When I showed it to Sadie yesterday afternoon, she wasn’t sure what to think.

I hope you’re not talking about me having big feet. My feet are purrfectly purrportioned to the rest of my body…in other words, purrtite, like me.

After I reassured her, she consented to helping me finish. I first needed to add two borders. Sadie helped me trim everything to the right size.

This is the fabric I selected for the back. It’s been in my stash a long time. It seemed as good as anything.

I quilted it pretty simply. There are big footprints in the four corners. It needed more than that, and so I quilted a line around the figure of Bigfoot. And then I stitched a line on either side of the black border. 

That seemed like plenty from a functional standpoint. I really didn’t want to add a lot of quilting. It’s supposed to look like a yield sign, right? I thought too much quilting would be distracting.

It was my first time trying a “faced” binding. It seemed as if this quilt needed it. Using the excellent tutorial right here, I was able to get it done. It was easier than expected. And here’s my finished quilt. It ends up at 16 x 16 inches.

Here’s how it looks from the back. That yellow solid strip is the faced binding.

Okay, so that was a quick finish. Two days from inception to completion. I’ll be linking up at the finish party at Persimon Dreams this morning.

Hopefully, we’ll be home again before lunch time, and I can get back to finishing the Bear Necessities baby quilt. It’s still sitting right where I left it needle down.

In other baby quilt news, my friend Sue texted me this picture of her grandson with the baby quilt I made for him. What a cutie.

Live long and prosper, young man.

Okay. I must prepare to face the Cat of Darkness and her deadly murder mittens. Wish us luck. If this is my last post, you’ll know it was death by exsanguination…and I’m not talking about Sadie. 

Marathon Stitching

Good morning, my friends. It was a beautiful day of weather yesterday. It looks like we're in for another pretty day today. It's a grocery shopping day, and so a dry day is always appreciated. The sky was pretty this morning, treating us to some pink and blue stripes of sky.

My day yesterday was spent hand-stitching...almost the whole day. Smitty was only too happy to help.

I was working on the embroidered portion of my Project Quilting 16.1 challenge...Mythological Creatures. I'll show this to you when I have it finished, but for now, I'm only giving you peeks. 

All that stitching paid off because I'm down to just borders, quilting, and binding now. I stitched through an entire skein of DMC black, and started on a new skein before I was finished. 

Mid day, I took a break from hand-stitching and went into the sewing room to sandwich the baby quilt for quilting. When I did, I noticed Smitty had taken up a position on his new kitty pole. They're still sniffing around it. Kitties are 'spicious about things that are new. You wouldn't want to end up getting carted off to the vet, and so it's important to resist the urge to engage in too much 'sploring. (Also, have you noticed how kitties have a habit of cutting off the first syllable of their words? Weird, huh?)

 

So, downstairs, the quilt was very well behaved. It laid flat, as it should, and I found a piece of scrap batting just the right size right away. I'm calling this quilt "Bear Necessities."

Back up two floors, I went to work on the quilting. I decided on a slightly variegated mint green for the top thread. This is an Aurifil 50 weight thread.

In the bobbin, another 50 weight Aurifil. (These threads brought to you by my quilting fairy godmother, Ila. Thank you, Ila.)

Usually I quilt this pattern using a straight-line diagonal grid. For this quilt, I decided to do something a little less industrial with this dot-to-dot pattern. I don't always add the petals in the center, but I'm doing it for this quilt. And, actually, this design is even easier than quilting with straight lines. No rulers required. I'll admit that I use a Hera marker and a ruler to crease the solid blocks, turning them into four-patches for quilting purposes.

Before stopping for the day, I had half the rows finished.

It's a little hard to see from the back, but here you go anyway. What I love about this design is that it's so pretty on the back.

And then, I left it needle down. Here's where I'll start next.

So, as I mentioned, we have grocery shopping to do, with two other stops along the way. I should have most of the afternoon to get back to my sewing. It's a hard choice because I'm enjoying both projects. I believe I'll give the Project Quilting piece first priority since there is a deadline to meet. I'm going to try doing a faced binding for the first time, and so I'm hoping I can get it at least to binding stage today. My thanks go to my friend, Wendy, who shared this excellent tutorial on faced bindings quite some time ago.

On the other hand, I'm kind of wanting to finish off the baby quilt too. I'll have to see which I want more when I'm able to get back to sewing. It's every quilter's dilemma, I think. What should I do next? Check back tomorrow for the exciting conclusion.

Meeting of the Minds

Good morning, my friends. I'm a little bleary-eyed as I'm writing this morning. I woke up too early, and then couldn't get back to sleep. I've had worse early-awakenings, and so it's not all bad. And since I don't have to go anywhere today, it hardly matters. I'm sure a nap is in my future...maybe sooner than you might think.

It was a good sewing day yesterday. I sewed my guts out and got quite a bit done. The kitties and I had a meeting of the minds over the first challenge for Season 16 of Project Quilting: "Mythical Creatures." When I read the prompt, I had a lot of ideas. Of course, I first asked myself if there was some sort of mythical cat. There were actually quite I few cats in mythology, but none I thought I could make into a quilt in one week. I thought about a few other things: dragons, unicorns, mermaids, centaurs...nothing really struck me as something I wanted to make. Finally, and simply because it would be easy to do, I printed out an image of a Phoenix, reasoning that at least I could do it in a single week.

When I showed it to the kitties, they were kind of Meheow about it. We had a length discussion about whether this design was worthy of my attention.

You can see my print out in the image above and below. I'd thought about doing it in applique. I just needed to choose some fabrics. Sadie was unimpurressed.

So, I let them hash it out for a while. While they held a closed-door meeting, I went to work finishing off the borders for The Sewing Room embroidered block. The embroidery was completed the day before.

And then, I made three pieced blocks. That completes January's allotment for this project.

The kitties were still discussing ideas for the challenge project when I decided to get to work on the baby quilt I've promised to a friend. (A promise made is a debt unpaid, according to my father.) Smitty helped me line up my ruler for the cutting.

I'm using the free four-patch pattern from the Quilts for Kids website. I've made this quilt so many times, I could probably do it in my sleep. The baby's parents have requested green and beige. As a reminder, this is my focus fabric:

These are the pieces I'll need:

The kitties had settled on an idea for my challenge quilt by then. Smitty was exhausted after such a long day of meetings, and so he retired to his office in HR (He Rests). He's made a space for himself in my sewing room closet.

Sadie wasn't at all sure she was up to the task of making a baby quilt without his help, but she agreed to give it a try.

She loves it when I make a baby quilt. The "baby" designation makes her think it's a quilt for her.

The first step was to create 15 4-patches. Easy enough.

And then I sewed them into rows.

And then I added this peachy-pinky border. It's the same color as the little bit of pink in the focus fabric, although the lighting in my sewing room makes it look more peach than pink.

And then, I needed just one more border from the focus fabric. It took the better part of my afternoon, but when I turned off the lights for the day, I had a finished quilt top.

Now, the back and binding strips are cut. I'll use the same focus fabric on the back. Today's goal will be to sandwich and quilt it. Usually, I quilt these quilts with a straight-line diagonal grid, but I'm kind of tempted to do some dot-to-dot quilting for this one. I'd like to fancy up the borders a little bit, but I haven't decided for sure yet.

Okay, so finishing this quilt will be today's goal. It's doubtful I can finish both quilting and binding today, but I'm hoping to get it to hand-stitching stage. I'll be stitching what remains of "Bicycles and Lace" for the Girls' Getaway quilt, and my challenge quilt will also be almost exclusively hand-stitched. Add in this quilt binding, and I see many hours of hand-stitching ahead. I like hand stitching. The kitties like it too.

Okay, and so hand-stitching is next. I'll work some more on the Bicycles and Lace piece, and then I'll get started on my challenge piece. I'm keeping my challenge piece a secret until it's finished...hopefully in the next couple of days.