Quilt accompli - May 21, 2025

Granddaughter #3's quilt is finished and washed and dried.  There are faint chalk marks that didn't come out.  I might wash it again.  Or not.  (They'll rub out eventually, I imagine.)

It would not win a ribbon (or even "place") at a quilt contest, but I am happy enough with it.  Now that I see it in this picture, I kind of wish I'd added a white border - those outside motifs look a little close to the edge in relation to the white spaces between them - but it'll have to do.  Ain't no way I'm taking off the binding.

While this quilt was in the washer, I worked on the wedding quilt a little more.  As I've explained in previous posts, I screwed up the quilt-as-you-go process by dividing the work into quadrants and quilting each quadrant, including the backing, before attempting to attach them.  Three of the four quadrants are pieced and quilted.  The fourth is partially pieced.  If I quilt it as I did the others, some hand sewing will be necessary to join the four quadrants.

I could eliminate the hand sewing by re-making one quadrant, which will allow me to do the quilt-as-you-go process correctly, and I've about decided to do that.  It will require a trip to the fabric store for a little extra fabric, but I don't mind going to the fabric store.  ;)

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Yesterday afternoon, while the wife and kids were gone to gymnastics class, Son #2 walked over to visit and ended up installing the bird feeder I got for Mother's Day.  He and The Husband attached it to the metal basketball goal post that managed to survive the tree that crashed around it during a storm last month.  I did not have any "loose" bird seeds to put in it, but we hammered a bird seed cake into bits and put it in the feeder.  So far, the birds haven't discovered it.  When they do, the camera in the feeder is supposed to send pictures to my phone.  How cool is that?

Speaking of birds, I'm hearing a turkey gobbling in the field beyond the gulley.  

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Last night while watching TV, to have something to do with my hands, I pulled out the hand embroidery kit that I bought to do on a road trip last month.  I'd tried it in the car, but the bumpy roads made precision work nearly impossible.  Plus, this kit may be a little above my skill level.  To finish it as pictured, I will need to master some fancy stitch types.  In an effort to up my game, I've been watching hand embroidery videos, and now I've got the embroidery bug.  I'm itching to draw and embroider my own designs.  Gotta learn how to embroider, first.  ;)  Fortunately, I have loads of embroidery thread to practice with, if it hasn't dry-rotted since my counted cross-stitch days, nearly 40 years ago.  

I did this in 1987!