When it rains, I sew. I am making lots of progress on the swordfish quilt top. I have most of the piecing done, I finished the spikey outer arcs yesterday. I have to put the large outer inset pieces together, then the whole top. It is put together in quadrants to avoid inset seams. It will be nice to work on something a little less “all encompassing”, once I clean up all the papers and fabric scraps from this project.

The Crabapple Hill stitch-a-long is fun, a new heart a day. I am brushing up on my stitches, and learning some new to me ones. The button hole stitch is one, I always used the blanket stitch for edging appliqué. The buttonhole has a small “anchor” on it, I like that it is more of an L than a C. I am using the Cosmo flosses I have left over from the Garden sampler and other Crabapple Hill projects I have done. I would like to add a little color to the fabric, but I can’t decide if I should use pencil or crayon. Now that we are 6 hearts in, I probably should not.

The Castle house is coming along, I am stitching it from the bottom up, whereas I did Santas House top down. I am a little disappointed that the four different shades of tan aren’t showing up as much as I would like. Looking at the photo below, they seem to show up okay. The walls of the castle remind me of a fair lisle sweater, but they are a bit more of a pain to stitch. Full coverage stitching is something I have been wanting to try. All the videos I have watched make it look easy, but the idea is hard for me to grasp. Parking threads and jumping from area to area with colors as needed, plus having all those threads hanging and trying to remember which is which. It is daunting to me, plus I like my backs to be neat, I will seldom jump more than three stitches to continue a thread. I got brave the other day and measured out the total area needed for the houses and cut the Aida cloth. It is so much easier to stitch without the extra rolled fabric on it.

The quilting on the Big Dream is stalled, I think there are ten more small petals to stitch out. Maybe I’ll finish it today. We have company coming tomorrow, so there are cleaning chores to be done today. 

Be Kind.