Morning Walk

The day got away from me yesterday. I did my slow stitching in the morning. The last of the sundresses is this far along, and I expect I'll finish it off this morning.

Although I reported sunshine yesterday morning, the clouds moved in before I was finished with my slow-stitching. Checking the forecast, the rain wasn't predicted to start until the afternoon. It took a bulldozer, but I got my lazy self out for a walk. Below is our neighbor's house. Smitty and Sadie are working tirelessly at evicting him from the propurrty.

Straight down our driveway, our human neighbor planted daffodils along the portion of the driveway shared with our three closest neighbors. Many years ago, I recall reading in our local paper that bulbs for either the white or the yellow daffodil with the orange center were becoming a rarity. The article requested folks with that particular variety share bulbs at some collection point. Although I've searched for the article, I can't find it. (It was long enough ago to be pre-internet.) So, I can't recall whether it was the white one like this one below...

...or the yellow one like this one below. In either case, our neighbor has us covered.

Still on the shared portion of the driveway, I noticed these tiny flowers hanging from one of the trees along the way.

Also, a pair of Cooper's hawks were circling. They must have a nest nearby. We get a lot of hawks for the same reason cats like it here...there are lots of little munchies running around in our field.

Nearly to the main road, I caught up with our friendly neighbor the horse. Thank goodness, I had a bag of horsey treats in my pocket.

He's sharing his pasture with a different mule from the one we see ordinarily. This one was smaller, and it wouldn't approach the fence no matter how many cookies I offered up. Nothing doing. Our neighbor often boards large equine animals for friends and family, and so I suspect that's what's going on here. He's probably mad about being left behind with strangers.

Okay, so here we go, officially on our way. Some of the blooming things I saw yesterday are common weeds, and it's often difficult to tell whether I'm looking at a flower or a flower bud. Just to be sure, I took pictures anyway.

At the top of the hill, this neighbor has some beautiful blooming trees in their yard.

Here's another of the weed shots.

In a long-ago blog post, I was able to identify this one, but I can't remember what it is.

This is some kind of wild fruit tree.

Here's something new with the red flowering currant in the background.

In the "every little thing" category...this fungus. The cap was smaller than a dime.

Oh, and lookie here...this is something I haven't seen yet this year.

I'd reached my turn-around point by then and took a picture of the valley below.

Testing the new camera's zoom capabilities, I zoomed in on this red barn. You can see it in the image above, about 1/3 of the way down the photo and near the middle.

You can't see this next one in the larger photo because it's outside the frame. But I zoomed in on a barn much farther away to see how well the camera could do, and it isn't too bad.

Then, I zoomed way, way out, far off in the distance. When the camera's lens is extended as far as it can go, I can activate the digital zoom to get even closer. That's what I did in the image below. Digital zoom isn't as good as the zoom provided by the lens, but this isn't too bad. It's a little grainy, but see for yourself.

So, I'm pretty happy with the camera's capabilities, both far away, and close-up.

On my way back home, I noticed this trillium nearly ready to bloom. I love the trilliums. The are my favorite of our native wildflowers.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I found this cluster in bloom just a little way on.

Here are just a few more I noticed toward the end of my walk.

It was already 1:00 p.m. by the time I reached home again. I was starving for lunch and also surprisingly tired. I ended up taking a nap in the afternoon, but got busy on my new sewing project before the end of the day.

My goal was to get all or most of the cutting done. I've cut all the "constant" pieces I'll need for the whole project.

And then I got to work cutting up scraps for the random 2-inch squares. I'm using my smallest scraps for this. Anything that can't be cut into a 2-inch square is getting thrown in the trash. Scraps are taking over my sewing room, and this project is designed to get rid of a goodly portion of them. To complete the first row of blocks, I'll need 180 of these 2-inch pieces. Yesterday I cut 100 of them.

They actually go pretty fast, and so I expect I'll be able to cut the remaining 80 and then start sewing before the end of today.

But first...grocery shopping. I still have food to get through the week, but we are out of our favorite Dove sorbet bars. You have no idea what a disaster that is, and so grocery shopping is a must. Hopefully, I'll have some completed blocks to show you tomorrow.

Maintaining my Sanity

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It's a rough job--maintaining my sanity--but someone has to do it. It's questionable whether I'm accomplishing it, I know. Of course I'm referring to the process of making the next section for the Wind in the Whiskers quilt. Here is the section I'm making right now. It's called "I Spy". And since I'm making the whole quilt, what I'm working on now is just the center section without the two borders.

The key to maintaining one's sanity with this quilt is to focus on just one step at a time. Don't look back woefully about what you might have done better, and don't look ahead with apprehension about what you have yet to do. Just do one thing at a time and celebrate each little completion as you go. I figured this out when I did the first section, but I had to remind myself when I started on this part.

On Thursday, I just barely got started by cutting the background...scary in and of itself...and then I started just the first couple of applique pieces. 

If you look at the image of the whole quilt

you can see that the I Spy section has leaves and flowers overlapping from the section above, and so I won't add those pieces until I get to the fourth section. The same was true for the first section, "Laundry Day".

Look again at the image of the whole quilt, and you'll see that there is quite a bit of overlap from the sections around this one, and that the clothesline is completely left out. It will be added when the quilt is finished.

So that brings me to yesterday's work. I started by focusing on making the little chickadee, and only the little chickadee. No fair peeking at those complicated flower sections at the bottom of the block. And I'm using a pressing sheet to create the whole bird from nine separate itty bitty pieces. The pressing sheet allows me to fuse them to one another while maintaining the ability to fuse the whole to the background fabric when I'm ready. You can see my little mini-tutorial about this right here. So here goes. I made the chickadee:

Then I made the cat from eight separate pieces:

Then the birdhouse from 11 different pieces:

Fourteen pieces if you count the pole. Then I took the first tentative steps of beginning to fuse things directly to the background fabric. This is where I really start to hold my breath and hope for the best. A better strategy would probably be to continue breathing. 

So here's the pole:

And then I added the rest of the birdhouse:

And then, the cat and the bird.

And here's what I had up to that point.

So far, so good. Now, it's safe to start looking at the flowers, and when I did, I realized that all of the flowers wrapped around the pole can be looked at individually without looking at the other flowers growing across the bottom of the piece. Here are the first ones, starting from the bottom.

Then I added the next parts of the vine and the next flower moving up the pole.

It was time to stop here for the day. So here's where I'll pick it up today.

Those flower head pins at the top of the pole are to remind me that  approximately a two-inch section is not yet fused down. The clothesline will go there, and it won't be fused until the end. Since I'm sure I won't remember that, I put those pins there so that I'll know not to iron over it.

So, I'm feeling pretty good about what I've accomplished so far on this. No big problems yet. The hardest part is having those tiny little pieces curl up, and that makes fusing them in the exact correct spot a little more challenging, but I'm getting it done. Using tweezers really helps. 

Also (and maybe this is obvious to some of you, but I had to learn it myself), when you're cutting those teensy little pieces and around those teensy little curves, it helps to keep the scissors in one place and use the tweezers to hold and rotate the piece you're cutting. Accuracy is very much improved that way. And avoid opening and closing the scissors too much. Just open them and keep cutting until the blades are completely closed, then open them again. I hope that makes sense. Probably any kindergartner knows this, but it's been a long time since I was a kindergartner. This old dog has to relearn some old tricks.

So that's it from me. Onward and upward with the birdhouse pole. I'm hoping I'll get the rest of this done today, but it's hard to estimate with so many little pieces. It is a challenge, but I'm counting on a gorgeous quilt when I'm finished that will make it all worthwhile.

Odds and Ends

I feel as if I accomplished a lot today, even if the things I accomplished were small things.  I put the border on my "Secret Garden" quilt.

This quilt began as a challenge quilt for a guild I was attending a while back.  The challenge was to do a technique that was new to us, and to tie the theme with a children's book.  The plan was to donate the quilts and the books to the CARES NW program, which is a medically-based child abuse assessment program in Portland.  Then, I stopped attending the guild, and so the challenge never went anywhere.  Nevertheless, I had already decided that my new technique would be to make this mystery quilt that was running in American Quilter magazine at the time.  I'd never done a mystery quilt before.  Since my focus blocks were floral, I was going to pair it up with:

That's how my quilt got its name.  So . . . that was supposed to have happened two months ago, but since I stopped going to the guild, I didn't participate in the challenge.  That doesn't mean I can't still donate the book and the quilt to CARES.  I think I probably will.  But first, I need to make a back for it.  That will mean purchasing some fabric, since I don't have anything large enough in my stash.  And it still needs quilting and binding, but this one is going to my long arm quilter.  I don't think I can stand any more free motion quilting right at the moment.

Then, I put a label on my "Spring!" quilt.

This one has been finished for a while, but I'm only just now getting around to putting a label on it.

George was very helpful through that process.

Then I started on something I've been wanting to do for a while.  This is my "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" quilt.  I haven't taken any pictures of it since it's been quilted.  I still need to do the hand-sewing on the binding, and so I'll post those later.  For now, I'll just show you the quilt top.

This quilt will go on our guestroom bed when it's all finished, and I wanted to make matching pillowcases for it.  I was all set with a pattern, and then I found this one on the Fabshophop website.  It's called Tulip Fields Forever (that link will take you to the PDF if you like the pattern).  It looks like this:

but I'm doing mine in black instead of white, and I'm making the paper-pieced tulips in the colors of the tulips in my quilt:  yellow, blue, pink, and purple.  Here's the first of 18 that I need to make (9 for each pillowcase).

Finally, I selected and washed the fabric for a baby quilt I want to make for the woman who does my facials (a little treat I give myself a couple of times a year).  The last time I saw her, I learned she was expecting her first child--a baby girl.  I'm going to use the same pattern I've used for Downy quilts in the past since it goes together fast, and the quilting is simple.  These are the fabrics I'm going to use (all from my stash):

I asked her if she was decorating her baby's room in pink for her little girl.  She said she was using pink, mauve, and gray, and I had just the right colors in my stash.  I'm kind of excited about this one.  She will be completely surprised.

So that's about it for me today.  Oh yes, I went to the grocery store too--one of my most hated tasks.  But with all that fun, I figured I should accomplish something house-holdy too.  Now we have food for the next week, which is always a good feeling.