Rows 2 and 3 done!

Yesterday was spent in the sewing room, working on Row 3 of the Past President's Project (PPP).  First, I worked on stitching down the fused applique for Row 3 of the quilt and here it is, all finished--maybe.

I used black thread and a small buttonhole stitch on the vine, leaves, flowers and berries--slow and tedious work but worth the effort. I found that my machine has a separate satin stitch that worked very well for the stems of the berries--I'd always tried to do satin stitch with the zigzag stitch and never was happy with the results. Now that I found the special satin stitch, I'm ecstatic!  😏

The reason I added the "maybe" above, is I'm wondering if I should embroider some bumblebees and/or dragonflies in some of the empty spaces. What do you think?

After I finished with the applique, I made up the 4 "Wild Ducks" blocks.  Unlike the blocks in Row 1, these called for 2 contrasting colors along with the background so my mind was challenged a bit to choose the fabrics.  Hah!  The problem is I've accumulated so many Civil War fabrics and I want to use all of them so it's hard to choose just 4 combinations, you see what I mean?  Or am I  the only one like this?

So, anyway I have three of the five rows finished for this quilt.  Today, I'll be working on the 4th and 5th rows which are pieced, and I'm saving the paper pieced blocks for after my surgery when I can get downstairs to the sewing room.

Don's commandeered the kitchen today, making his extremely good salsa, so that frees me to spend the day sewing!  Win Win, if you ask me!  Later in the week, I hope to make some salsa with some of the green tomatoes we have.  I've never made it but it looks like a tasty recipe and I thought I'd give it a try.  

I'm also going to get the quilts washed today--2 are in the washer as I "speak" and I have two others to go in. It's a somewhat cool but sunny day here in Western Wisconsin and these quilts will dry on the line and get that wonderful fresh air scent.  While I wait for the washer to do it's thing, I'll be working on typing up the directions for the applique row.  I think I'll post the directions on this blog and get your feedback.  I'd like to be sure I've included everything needed and that my directions are as clear as possible.  Please help me with this, okay?

That's it for today.  Lots to do before sunset.