Good morning, my friends. Not much was accomplished yesterday in the sewing room. Not much was accomplished in any of the other rooms of the house either. I said I was going to take it easy, but I approached new levels of laziness the likes of which the world has never seen. (I'm working on my hyperbole. It'll be important to keep up as we head into the future.)
The one thing I wanted to finish for sure was the fourth block for the Merry, Merry Snowmen quilt. I needed to finish top-stitching the snowmen, and then I needed to hand-stitch their faces and sew on their buttons. When it was all finished, it looked like this:
Sadie was my helper cat yesterday. For all that I was lazy, she was ready to work.
When I laid out the four blocks on my design floor, she went straight to work inspecting them.
It's a good thing too because she noticed something on the third block, I hadn't seen. Do you see it?
I neglected to put the "point" on the exclamation point for the word "Joy!" Well. That was easy enough to fix. I stitched the word on my machine, and I'm sure I intended to add the dot by hand, but then forgot about it. So, thankfully, my cat caught it (she's good at catching things), and it's fixed now.
Here are the four blocks I have for this quilt so far.
After that, she helped me read through the instructions for "The Sewing Room" BOM that starts up this month. You can
find all the info right here.
I needed to pick a background fabric for the embroidered blocks. Usually, I would avoid something with a pattern like this, but the embroidery will go nicely with this floral background.
Generally, I avoid this sort of print because it can be hard to see to trace the design. Pinning it to the page and placing it on my lightbox, it was easy enough to see, and so I'll go with that.
And I can only assume I was struck color blind yesterday. Almost always, I trace my designs using a Pigma Micron .01 size pen using brown ink. Brown ink seems easiest to cover regardless of the color of floss I'm working with. So, I reached for the brown pen, but then realized I was tracing with black ink. Oh well. No biggy. When it was finished, I put the pen away, but then realized I'd forgotten to stitch the thread line below the word "needles." So I reached for the black pen this time, but then realized I'd chosen blue. Oy. Color blindness. It's the only explanation. When it was traced, and applique completed, it looked like this:
There is one button to be sewn on when the stitching is complete. I decided to go ahead and find an appropriate button while I was at it.
And then, I chose some floss from my vast stash of embroidery floss. She hasn't designated any colors, and that's just fine since I generally go my own way on these. These are the colors I'll need for this first block.
Now it's hooped up and ready to go.
For this project, there are 36 blocks total. Nine are embroidered, and the rest are pieced. My goal is to stitch one embroidered block and sew together three pieced blocks until they're all finished. Possibly, I'll start on this first block today, but I still have quite a ways to go on the "Bicycles and Lace" for the Girls' Getaway quilt.
I'm nearly finished with the "Rosy Pink" bicycle now, but there's still one more to stitch when that one is finished.
I'd like to finish the bicycles first, but The Sewing Room could give me a little break.
It was too late in the day to start anything at that point, and so I looked ahead to my embroidery dance card. The "short" project is up next. I gave Mr. Random a chance to choose my next short project, but he chose something with Santas on it. And, I'm sorry, but I've had enough of Santa for the time being. I decided to choose my own project this time. I want to stitch the "Catmint" block that goes with Crabapple Hill's "Twilight Garden" quilt. I'm not making the whole quilt, shown in the left corner of the pattern, but I do like this one little cat block.
She had colors designated, but again...I'm trying to pick from my floss stash. I had two of the five colors listed, but the rest are substitutions. These should get the job done.
And for my last gasp in the sewing room, I selected the fabrics I'll use for the cup in this first block for the
Kittens in Cups quilt.
I'm doing this in the colors for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and January's color is pink. The polka dot will be for the cup, and the solid will be the cup handle.
I pulled some gray and white fabrics to make the cat, and I'll get started on this today. Since I haven't made these blocks before, I'm not sure how involved they are. Possibly I can finish it in a single day, but no promises.
So I have a couple of short housekeeping chores to do today, and I have a couple of paperworky things to take care of. Also, I need to make an appointment for a mammogram. What fun! I can hardly wait! If I'm lucky, maybe I can work in a colonoscopy too. Follow me for more entertainment ideas.
So, there's plenty to keep me busy today. I think I've used up my lazy quota for the week. Time to get back to work. And, honestly, when sewing is the "work," how bad can it be?