Four Projects

Good morning, my friends. Our yesterday started out with a dense fog advisory. Before noon, the sky had cleared and it turned into a pretty nice day. I had some things to do around the house, but I got an early start on my sewing.

My first priority was to finish quilting the blocks for the Barnyard quilt. It was hard to know what to do on some of these blocks. For a few of them, I simply put my needle down somewhere and then let my hands decide what to do. This one, for example...picking some points I can sew to...what if I sew a triangle right here?

And what if I sew another one right beside it?

And what if I just go all the way around like that?

That seemed like enough quilting, and so I finished off the door and the roof.

Well...I forgot to take a picture of the back of that one. But, moving on...How about this one? What should I do here?

I like how those lines radiate out from the center of the star. Here’s how it looks from the back.

And then…one more. I puzzled over this one the longest. If I make a shape large enough, I can always fill in the middle with more lines or with something else. For these quilt blocks, I wanted all straight lines.

Here’s how that looks from the back.

Today I’ll go to work on the horizontal sashings. I have an idea what to do there, and I might decide to add in some curves in the sashings and in the borders. Today’s goal will be to finish the horizontal sashings, although I have no idea if that’s a realistic goal. If it is, I’ll work on the vertical sashings tomorrow. After that, I’ll just have the outer border to finish.

Next, I wanted to fix the tail on the kitten. This is how it looked when I showed it to you in yesterday's post.

I didn't like the way the tip of the tail faded into the background, and so I switched that piece out to the darker color.

And then I added the handle. Only when I uploaded this picture, I realized I made the handle wrong. I'm going to have to fix that. There were supposed to be two flippy corners at the top to round off the corners there. Oy. I have a love-hate relationship with this project. The blocks are very cute. I still hate making them. The design is clever, but there are so many ways to make mistakes with them. I think I sewed every seam wrong as I was making this one, even though I’ve made this same block many times before.

Here are the ten blocks I have for this quilt so far, but I'll have to fix the handle in the upper right.

From there, I made the back for the Scrappy Plus block. I wasn't trying to match up the design where the seam landed, but it worked out anyway. Just a happy accident.

And then...I finished the quilt top for my Sashiko piece. Here's a peek for you.

I’m pretty happy with how this is turning out. Now I’m kind of excited to show it to you. The subject of my design has special significance, and I’m glad it worked. (I had my doubts as I was stitching it.) It still needs to be sandwiched for quilting, although I’ll keep the quilting to a minimum. After that, it’ll just need a binding. It’ll finish up at 15 x 17.5 inches. Reveal is November 1st…coming right up.

So I’ll do my slow-stitching project this morning, and I’ll continue on quilting the Barnyard project.  In the basement sewing room, I’ll fix the kitten’s cup handle, and then I’ll try to get the Sashiko  piece to hand-sewing the binding. I can always count on the sewing room to serve as my boredom-prevention zone.

I’m still waiting for the pattern to start the Fantastic Feline kitten panel project I’ve set aside. The pattern was coming from Iowa, and it was mailed on Monday (I’m told). It seems like it should have been here by now, but what do I know? It’s a crazy world out there right now. If it hasn’t arrived by Monday, I’ll check in again. 

Okay. Off I go. Happy Saturday, Everyone!

Barn Cat

Good morning, my friends. It was a productive day yesterday. I finished most everything I wanted to during the day, and even started on a new slow-stitching project. When I left you, I was getting ready to quilt the aqua barn for the Barnyard quilt. The quilting is going well, but quilting with rulers is a little tedious. I broke yesterday's row of blocks into three sittings to give myself a break between them.

Starting with the aqua block...it was hard to know what to do here, but I figured it out eventually.

Here's how that looks from the back.

To the left, I worked on the green and blue barn. I like how this one turned out.

Here's how it looks from the back.

From there, I gave myself a break and finished stitching the names and places for the final two Shop Hop 4.0 blocks. I'll set this aside now until that project comes up in my WIPs rotation again.

And then I returned to the quilting. The black block was quilted the same as the barn door.

Here's how that looks from the back.

Now I've reached the final row of blocks. This is the top row, and so I turned the quilt around to keep the bulk up on the table rather than in my lap. I left it needle down in this position, but I haven't a clue how to quilt it. I'll figure something out.

Okay and then I turned to another tedious project. I like these Kittens in Teacups blocks, but they are a PITA to make. First, there's a lot of cutting. All the background pieces are already cut, but I have to cut the pieces for the kitten and the teacup for each block as I come to it. These are all the pieces for October's black and brown block.

Sadie knew I was making a black kitten in a black cup. She's partial to black herself, and so she stood by and snoopervised while I sewed it together.

Probably, I should have chosen a different color for the kitten, but this one will have to do. I've decided to redo the tip of the tail in the upper right-hand corner. The white tail tip disappears against the white background. I'll fix that today and make it from the same black fabric as the rest of the kitten. It still needs to have the handle added to the teacup, and so I'll finish this off today.

And that brought me to the end of my sewing day. I took the first stitches on the final block for Grandpa's Bridges while we watched the news.

I'll start there again this morning.

Today's agenda will be to finish the final row of blocks on the Barnyard project. Then I'll finish making the Kitten in a Teacup. If I can get both of those finished, I'll make a back for the Scrappy Plus project. And, yes, there's some housekeeping to do, but it won't take very long. 

The sun has returned today. We got about an inch of rain out of that last storm. The field is greening up nicely. Some daffodil bulbs arrived in yesterday's mail. I was a little worried about them since they were coming from Holland. With the new tariffs, I've heard that there have been some problems with international mail and shipping. I can lay those worries aside now and get down to planting the bulbs. But I'm not ready for that yet, and the ground is probably too muddy anyway. Hopefully, we'll get those into the ground over the coming week.

So that's all I have for you today. It's time for breakfast. I'll leave you to your day's activities. Have a good day! The weekend is coming!

Turn on those Sad Songs

Good morning, my friends. It was the worst possible morning in cat land. It was raining...hard...and Smitty was relegated to the sheltered part of his catio.

The whole of the catio has a roof, but with the rain coming down so hard, he must have felt as if he needed even more cover.

Sadie was completely disgusted. How could we present them with such a terrible day of weather?

My morning was spent finishing off Block 7 of the Raggedy & Friends project. I'll set this aside until I'm ready to piece together the block.

There were some cookie ingredients I wanted to use up, and so I spent a little time making these Chocolate-chunk Oatmeal Cookies with Pecans and Dried Cherries for Two. They were quick to make. We enjoyed those with our afternoon cup of espresso.

It seemed like a good day for a Bowflex workout, and then I got busy with my quilting. Before I started, I checked the quilt back to make sure I wasn't going to get any pleats.

I'm enjoying this dot-to-dot quilting. The designs evolve as I go, beginning with the spot where I put the needle down. It could be anywhere. I started this one at the center seam. My only rule is that I'm not stitching in the ditch anywhere. I can cross the seam lines, but I'm avoiding stitching in the seams. Here's where I started with this orange block.

I thought it needed a little more quilting around the outside, and so I added another line.

And then I finished off the door and the roof.

Here's how it looks from the back.

From there, I moved to the left for the purple block.

Here's how that looks from the back.

And then I finished off the right side of the row with this red block.

Here's how that looks from the back.

So now I've moved to the bottom row. I left it needle down right here.

This being the beginning of the month, it's time to set a goal for October's:

My goal for October will be to finish quilting and binding the Barnyard quilt currently under my quilting needle.

Let's check in on our despondent kitties. Smitty gave up and took an afternoon nap.

Sadie joined him.

Okay, so with my slow-stitching piece finished, I needed something new. I prepared the final block for the Grandpa's Bridges project. This will be the 12th of 12 blocks. These were all printed on Sticky Fabri-Solvy, and I took them along on a trip last year. When we returned from our trip, I put them into the regular rotation with my other embroidery projects. It's good to be starting on the last one.

But before I can do that, I need to stitch out the final names and places for the Shop Hop 4.0 quilt. I'll start stitching these this morning. They shouldn't take long.

I haven't looked at the calendar today, but undoubtedly, I have at least one housekeeping chore on the list. It's also a treadmill day, and so I'll get in a walk there. After that, it's sewing for the rest of the day. I'll get another row finished on the Barnyard quilt, and then I'll see what jumps out at me in the sewing room to finish off the day. If I'm going to link up at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this Saturday, I should probably get busy on October's kitten in a teacup.

What's going on in your sewing room today?

Quilt Shop: The Cotton Patch, Keizer, Oregon

Good morning, my friends. It was a successful outing to the quilt shop, in more ways than one. I had a couple of stops to make along the way, but I reached the quilt shop about 45 minutes after leaving home. In another life, I blogged about this quilt shop when they were at a different location. This was my first visit to this new location, although they've been at the new location for nearly three years. I'm fortunate to have a couple of good options closer to home, and so I don't get down that way very often. But since it was backing day, I made the trek. This must be the place:

Walking in the front door, it looked like this:

To my left was a long wall of fabrics.

Right in front of me...these pretty fall fabrics. I liked those patterns too.

Walking along the wall of fabrics to the back of the store, I turned around to see this row to my left.

It's not a large shop, but they managed to fit a lot of fabric into a smallish space.

And look at that! It's the Painted Ladies. They only did about one-third of the whole quilt for their wall-hanging.

Here's the version I made. Mine still needs quilting and binding.

Oh, and I was sorely tempted by this pattern. Regaining my senses, I realized I have enough cat patterns to keep me busy until the day I die. Still...it's tempting.

Uh-Oh...avert your eyes. Christmas fabrics. It's too early for that, if you ask me.

In this room were batiks. That's a classroom off to the left side of the image. There was a class going on there.

Okay, and so heading back the way I came, I noticed these bolts on a clearance rack. I didn't see anything there I couldn't live without.

To my left were these "mini bolts." They were come-as-you-are, meaning, you took the whole thing. No cuts. Kind of like an end of bolt sale. These appeared to be empty bolts that had been cut in half and then used to wrap these fabrics. Nothing there caught my eye either. 

I was really interested in these grays for my quilt. I liked the two you see there. I liked the scale of the one on the right. But I liked how the one on the left was set on the diagonal.

Walking a little farther on, I found this one at the scale and on the diagonal as I wanted it. That was an easy choice. I got four yards of it. With the backing day discount, one yard was free.

I don't know about you, but I think this is a perfect back for my Scrappy Plus quilt.

And then I headed back to the front of the store to have another look at those fall fabrics. I liked this one to finish off my pumpkin stitchery. Probably, I only needed one yard (or less), but I liked this one enough that I asked for two yards.

It has all the right colors to finish off my pumpkin.

And then...look at this. I love this design as a back for the Kittens in Teacups.

The color seemed wrong to me, though, and so I included the manufacturer in my photo, and then went online to see if it came in a different colorway. And it does!!! So I found this one on Etsy, and I bought four yards of that.

And I don't know if those colors are any better, but I liked them better. I'm still making the Kittens in Teacups. Here are the blocks I have so far.

I'm getting ready to make another block for October. This is the fabric I've selected for the cup. I'll give it a brown handle and base, in keeping with October's black and brown colors.

Now, you might think I picked up that fabric in Alaska, but I did not. It actually came from a quilt shop in Thayne, Wyoming.

So, with all that running around, I didn't do any sewing yesterday. The morning started with me taking the first stitches on Block 7 for the Raggedy & Friends project. Aside from that, I got nothin'.

So, today I'll get back to my quilting, starting right here:

Since I'm only quilting one row at a time, I should have time for some other sewing today. I'll make a back for the Scrappy Plus quilt, and then I'll get busy making October's block for the Kittens in Teacups. Those blocks are time-consuming, and so that will probably take up the rest of my sewing day. If there's more time in the day, I'll get back to my Sashiko project. The reveal is November 1st, and so I need to finish it off. I looked at fabrics for that while I was at the quilt shop, but I didn't see anything I liked better than what I've already pulled from my own stash.

Okay, so a busy day ahead. I guess I'll get to it.