Through With Gray

 

I was finishing up the grey quilting on the Village quilt when I ran out of bobbin for the last of the corner. 

Apparently this is now called "losing at Bobbin Chicken." I'm using this Aurifil as both the top and the bottom thread.

I folded the non-quilted part of the quilt over and pinned it up to get a look at how the quilting looks.

It's not too prominent or noticeable.

Here's how the corner turned out after I wound up a new bobbin.

]

My new studio assistant spent some time napping on it, and said it was still soft enough for a bed.

I forgot just how big this quilt is! Now onto getting the blue sky done.

Fog Texture

 

I briefly pinned the Village quilt up on the design wall to see if the fog/clouds I was quilting worked or not. 

From a distance, it's just kind of texture-y, which is fine.

I went ahead and did a bunch more quilting.

I need to do better in between the houses, maybe something more swirly/ooser.

I tested to see if the light grey thread works on the light blue fabric too. And it does.

Quilt The Sky

 

As I'm all set up for free motion quilting, I decided to jump over to the Village quilt aka Japanese Houses. But first, I changed the needle, because I couldn't remember the last time I put a new one in! A Schmetz Chrome quilting needle specifically. I have one of those needle minders so at least I know which kind is in the machine, but it doesn't say when. Then I cleaned out the bobbin area. 

Not too bad of an amount this time, sometimes it's truly amazing how much is packed in that space. Free motion quilting means a huge number of stitches, so it's always worth checking. Clearing the way for everything to work well at top speed.

I'm trying to imply fog or clouds in the "sky" of the quilt. In this grey section especially. I may switch it to wind or something else in the blue sections.

I like the look of it so far, but need more practice.

It's a little harder in the spaces between the houses, so I have to figure that out.

Then my studio assistant reminded me it was time to take a break to play with his new piece of yarn.

He was a little put out when I let the Original Cat™ play with it as well. 

We're trying to all get along, but it's hard going sometimes. 

Stitch Happens Quilted

 

And finally it's all quilted! The stitching on Stitch Happens has happened. Here's the binding all ready to get sewn on and then this'll be a done-zo deal. 

I made a lot of thread color changes, but I think that it was worth it.

I had all the fun playing around with filling in the different shapes in this quilting.

Avoiding stitching over the eyes of course.

I'm particularly pleased with how the spool of thread turned out.

Front And Back

 

Nearing completion of the quilting on Stitch Happens. Here are some pictures of how the back is looking.

I'm kind of regretting that I used grey in the bobbin for the initial anchor quilting as it really shows up. I switched over to orange which looks pretty cool.

I did a bunch of spirals in free motion quilting for the purple border.

And then in the background I did walking foot echo quilting.

I figured anything else wouldn't really show up due to the very busy letter fabric.

Trying not to work myself up into taking the anchor quilting out. It would really be too much.

I'm pretty pleased overall with the quilting so far. But I'm also looking forward to being done.

The grey thread that I used really disappeared which was pretty much the idea.

Wandering Wednesday: The Top of Pothole Dome

Finally, we wandered somewhere, back to our favorite place to camp, Yosemite. On one of the days we journeyed up to the high country to visit Tuolumne Meadows. There was a hike that I had always wanted to do, one of the smaller granite domes, Pothole Dome, as seen here from the trail. Years ago, the last time we went camping in Yosemite with our kids, they all climbed up the dome and I sat in the car. This was before I'd gotten my meds right, and I frequently ran out of any and all energy. I sat there and enjoyed watching my family scamper up, and enjoyed the nice mountain breeze from my seat in the car, but I was really sad that I couldn't participate. 

But this time, I had the oomph to try it. The giant meadow was very very wet for this late in September, which is good. Making up for all those dry years.

Once you get to the granite dome, the trail peters out and you're on your own getting up onto the rock. It's not hard, there are plenty of not too steep approaches to choose from. We followed one of the bigger fissures. Note, the sky is really really *that* blue. No adjustments or edits were made to these photos.

It seems kind of endless, you can't see the top for quite a while. I love those separate boulders that get left behind when all the glacial action is over and the ice has melted. 

Another fellow hiker offered to take our picture, how nice to get one that isn't an awkward couple selfie. 

Well, not too awkward I guess. The peak to the right of me is Cathedral, we did a several night backpacking trip up there and over Cloud's Rest to the top of Half Dome in the late 80's (ie very long ago!). I really could not make that trip now, so I'm super glad to have done it when I was able to. But this time, I was able to make it up to the top of this dome. It's all worthwhile to do, even just going up to Tuolumne there if you don't hike at all, just to see this with your own eyes is a tremendous privilege that I really treasure.

Subconscious Color Choices

 

Remember the fabric postcard I made a little bit ago?

I was scrolling through my photos and was surprised to notice the kind of eerie similarity between the picture of our new orange tent with the blue blow-up Aero bed matched so closely in color and even shape. 

So I combined both pictures in Snapped with a bunch of effects layered on:

Pretty cool match, huh? I made the fabric postcard the same day that I took the tent photo, but I didn't choose those those fabrics consciously or anything. They just happened to be on the top of my scrap basket from working on the Metro Twist quilt. Is there such a thing as subconscious color choices? Maybe so. 

Road Stitching

 We traveled up to my SIL's for Rosh Hashanah dinner, (Shanah Tovah! It's finally 5784) so I got to do some road stitching. I wish I'd taken a picture of the lovely table, but I think I was too busy eating the fabulous brisket that she made for us. As you can see I am using the great project bag that friend Jaye gave me.

Road stitching is what I call it when I take out my on-the-go bag to avoid the stress of being a passenger in freeway traffic. It's safer for everyone, really. Except for me vs, the needle of course.

My trick is to pre-thread a needle with floss before we are driving, that way I can at least get started easily.

One thread's worth done at a time will eventually finish this piece, right?

X The Border

Back in the sewing room after our camping trip to Yosemite. Back to some quilting on the Stitch Happens quilt.

This time it's walking foot instead of free motion.

As soon as I was really into stitching, of course the new Studio Assistant, Korben decided to get involved.

Mostly he just watched and sat on the quilt. No more worry about the quilt slipping off the table I guess.

Then he really started testing out the quilt for snuggly-ness potential.

It got a little harder to stitch the further asleep he became, but we worked it out.

Pretty quick to do freehand X's.

I went around the whole border with X marks the spot. It turned out pretty well without marking anything.
 And a good short nap was had.