Friday when I was in Spooner having lunch with my good friend, Diane, we had to stop at Thimbles quilt shop across the street. Diane makes quilts also, as well as doing many other interesting things. This shop has a great selection of wools for penny rugs and so forth, gorgeous heavyweight flannels, and a huge selection of animal prints--cats and dogs mostly but Diane found a very cute fabric printed with orange tadpoles! Never saw that anywhere else!
They also carry a sizeable assortment of embroidery patterns and Cosmo floss and what came home with me that day was this pattern from Bird Brain Designs. Sorry that it's so hard to see what's inside but even when I enlarged the pic, it still was illegible. There are 2 patterns in there and I'm going to do the one on the right. It says, "In a Purrfect World. . . Every Home Would Have a Cat And Every Cat Would Have a Home."
I immediately thought of my daughter who's a cat lover and decided to make this little quilt for her. It's embroidered in redwork and I thought I'd make it into a little wall hanging, framed with a couple of pieced borders, for her to hang in her cubicle at work. So, my "job" for yesterday was to trace out the pattern and get everything ready to take with me on my trip to Maine where I'll work on this in the evenings.
Not only is Tessa (and her daughter Lily) a cat lover, she also works for a company that makes lab supplies and software programs for veterinary clinics. They're all about promoting adoption of shelter animals, not just cats, but that's Tessa's animal of choice. I think she'll like this piece.
Somewhere I'd read about putting the fabric with the traced design over a piece of batting and embroidering through both layers. I decided to try this technique this time to see how it works. I'm hoping that there will be a quilted look to the embroidered part and that I won't have to go in there with the machine and quilt it up, just some machine quilting on the borders. Can anyone tell me of any experience they've had embroidering through batting? I'd love to hear how that went before I commit myself to this.
One reason I only did this little project yesterday is that youngest daughter Jo came home to celebrate her father's birthday and we had a very nice birthday dinner together. Jo and I made a little trip to the local food Coop so she could pick up some things she likes and I brought home 3 little gluten free "Espresso and Mint" brownies. Don doesn't like to eat sweets so he'd asked to not have cake but I couldn't resist the brownies. Neither did he and we all three agreed they were oh, so yummy! Afterward, I found this recipe that sounds good and that I'll be trying after I get home from Maine.
Don't they look just wonderful!
Yes, I'm going out to Maine for a week with Tessa and Lily. Tessa is having a "gastric sleeve" surgery and I'm going to be there to take care of Lily as well as helping Tessa out while she's off work for a few days. Looking forward to seeing my "girls" again after how many months away. Those of you who've read my posts over the years, know that Lily practically lived with Don and I for a long time while Tessa was finishing school and finding a job that worked for her. So to be so far away from her has been a huge adjustment for us. I have such conflicted feelings--I'm so happy that Lily and Tessa are happy in Maine and that Lily has made friends and that Tessa's job continues to go well, and at the same time, I really wish they were back here, living in the same town, so Lily could come over after school and they could drop in on the weekends to spend time with us. But mostly, I'm happy they're doing well where they are. At any rate, I'm really looking forward to boarding that plane Wednesday morning and being there for the afternoon!
Before then, however, I have a number of things that have to be done today and tomorrow, like going to the cheese store and stocking up on cheeses to bring to Maine with me. They absolutely love WI cheese! And I have to get some potting soil to transplant my starter plants which are getting too big for the peat pots they started in. So, it's off to get these things done!
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