First Finish

The sock monkeys win the first finish of the new year. The binding is sewn. The quilt is washed and packaged up for mailing. Here's how it looks.

From the back...

Not sure how I like that white fabric folded to the top as a binding, but I doubt the kids will care.

It was late in the day when I made my way into the sewing room to finish it yesterday. By the time it was finished, it seemed too late to start on anything else. As it turns out, I could have done more because Mike was late getting home after dealing with our switch to a new cell phone service provider. Still, it meant I decided to organize the stack of patterns that collected in my closet over months of printing off and ripping out. My patterns are sorted into categories and stored in large binders on a shelf. There are so many now that ten people couldn't live long enough to make all of them. To avoid having the collection of binders grow to ridiculous numbers, I now force myself to discard one pattern for every one that gets added.

Sadie has her own organizational strategy.

She tests each pattern for softness and rates it on a Likert scale:

5 = Super soft and snuggly
4 = Mostly soft...will do when there is no lap available
3 = Moderately soft...good enough for Smitty
2 = Barely soft...barely acceptable
1 = Porcupine...Unacceptable

The only other sewing I did yesterday was to add some more words to the Let's RV cross stitch. I'm using that term "cross stitch" loosely. There is very little cross stitch here. It's almost entirely back stitch, but I'm not complaining.

I think by the end of this morning's stitchfest, I'll be ready to move the hoop to the right. It's rather slow going, and I've made a few mistakes. No, I will not point them out to you.

Today I have some housework to do because I neglected yesterday's task. Grocery shopping sapped all my strength for adult-like things. I'll catch up today. Also, I have several items packed up for mailing. It's supposed to be a nice day, and so I have a plan to drive into town, visit the post office, and then take a walk down the main drag through town. It's been a while since I've done that.

If there's time today, I want to get going quilting the Lucky Charm quilt. This is a small table topper, and so it shouldn't take too long.

I have some ideas about how to quilt it, but I'll need to practice a little to see if I can pull it off.

As always, there's lots to do. Time to get going. Fingers crossed for some sunshine today.