Happy Easter Weekend or Happy First Full moon after the equinox.
Hope you have a great break from work and find fun ways to spend the weekend. Yes. I know it only supposed to be on Sunday, but I am happy to have all of the days off.
This year I have taken off the Thursday and the Tuesday. This gives 6 days of sewing. Oh bliss.
I have started with the backing. I have stitched together 11 stripes. There was a bit of an incident where I had followed the second pattern that I had created in Xcel, but luckily there was only a little swearing and some light un-picking.
I have started making some mug rugs with some of the left over blocks from the granny's garden. I am using them to update my quilting skills. It takes a while to get my fingers into the rhythm of quilting. This way all the really bad stitching will happen on an item other than my quilt. This in no way exempts me from doing bad stitching when I start on the actual quilt. After such a long time,
I had forgotten how much quilting hurts the fingers. I have been using a rubber thimble whilst piecing. I once again realized that although lovely to use, the rubber thimble is just not strong enough to do the quilting. I will go hunt out the metal thimbles and the plasters needed to stop them from hurting my delicate little fingers.
I went out and bought a whole lot of binding. So beautiful, I will share a picture later. I even bought the binding for the large quilt.
Hope you all have break from work and a project to keep your fingers happy. Hope you enjoy the cute Easter quilts that I found.
Have a good one.
April is here already. This year is zooming by at such a rate. All of us are worried about global warming, maybe we should be worried that time is slipping by due to the earth spinning faster. The older you get the faster it seems. Though the speed of 1,700 km/h (1,040 m/h) is pretty fast. We are pretty radical if you think that we walk on an object moving this fast.
The kittens have grown to be small cats now. They have settled into our family as it they were always there. Each of the kittens have developed their own little personalities. The little boy has been to the vet twice so far from being a boy and doing things that the little girl would not think of doing.
Though saying this, I have to admit that the little girls is a killer of any flying insect that comes her way. It is so amusing to watch them do arial fights in persute of moths. Neither of them seem to have a sense of self preservation.
One of the trips to the vet was due to the little boy chasing, catching and eating a bee. We have a hive in our chimney. We do not use the chimney as I threw out the fire place that was attached to it. The bees have now lived in the chimney for the 18 years that we have lived in the house.
Initially I tried to have them removed. After two attempts and doing all of the things you are supposed to do so that African Killer bees do not take residence, I have come to a place of peace where the bees, my family and pets can co-exist. They enjoy the garden and so do we. I would never discourage all of the birds that live on the property so why do it to the most marvelous insect. With that said, the little boy cat has to come to terms that some insects bite back.
I have finished piecing my Granny's garden top. I have cut the squares that I will be using for the back. I just need to take out the sewing machine and stitch it. This is one thing the I don't hand stitch. The back need to be smooth as possible and machine stitching has less texture than hand stitching.
I love stitching up a quilt with the machine. It is so fast. Although I have embraced the Zen required to hand piece a quilt, there is still the savage side of me that would love to produce multiple quilts in a short amount of time. This is the part of my personality that I am still working on.
From being a fidgety child 50 years ago, I think I have come a long way in being able to sit quietly and stitch away. I find it interesting that when I stitch , my mood needs to be calm, as each bit of non-calmness results in my thread snapping or snarling into a knot. Very much like the tension on a sewing machine.
Hope you all have a marvelous first day of April and have an interesting project for the Easter weekend.
Have a good one!
