A Winter (and Quilter's) Wonderland!

If you live in the USA, you've probably heard that the upper Midwest has been under a huge snow storm system, which is now over New England still dropping snow!  This is the view from my dining room window onto the back deck.  Through the screen--sorry for the grid, but I'm not going out in this crap! Anyway, you can see in the right side of the photo that the snow has drifted a bit, leaving a relatively bare spot neat the flower boxes. I estimate the snow on the deck is between 2 and 3 feet deep.  Same for the amount on the roof.  Hope the rafters are strong enough to carry the load since neither Don nor I are going up there to shovel it off. 

Since it's been too nasty to go out unless one truly needed to, which I don't, I've been holed up in my sewing room.  I did begin the quilting on Dan's quilt, shown below.  

I got this fabric a couple of years ago while on a shop hop, along with several companion pieces. Sewed it up last year while we were wintering in Gulf Shores, and pinned it last November. 

I got all the straight line quilting done, just a simple grid that you can see below, and stitching in the ditch around all the red and gray sashing pieces.  I have to put this away for now, since I'm going to get the Mable quilt pinned up today and will do all the straight line stitching on that before I change out my machines to do the free motion designs on both quilts. 

Today, I exercised some self discipline and got in an hour of housework before I sat down to check the blogs.  I have a plan that I'll do an hour of housework every day before I sit down to read, surf the web, or go to the sewing room.  I keep to this plan about 3 or 4 days of the week, so I'm always very happy on the days when I actually accomplish a chore or two.  

As I was cleaning the living room, I realized that I needed to change out the quilt in there.  I pulled out my flower quilt and put it up.  Sorry for the lousy lighting, but that's my camera for you.  

Below are the four embroidered flower bouquet blocks in the quilt.  

This is a pattern from Crabapple Hill and I made it a couple of years ago. It was supposed to be my show piece that I would enter in quilt shows, etc, but after I had it finished and hung up, I saw the error, so I just keep it here for my personal viewing.  I loved doing the embroidery, including the Bouillon Knot for the first time, and a bunch of satin stitch which I'd avoided in the past, but now embrace.

I also finished the embroidered and quilted table runner that I'd made for the piano top, shown here. 

I tried my hand at hand quilting on this piece, and had a terrible time stitching with a thimble on my finger, I also had begun the quilting without using a hoop and when it was about half finished, I took a good look at the back and realized that I had to take out all the stitching and begin over--using a hoop this time!  I never mastered the rocking motion that hand quilters mention, and did all of it by "stitch and stab."  I'm satisfied with how it all came out, and it looks pretty good on the piano, so that's that.

After I return from pinning the Mabel quilt, I'll be in the kitchen cooking up a pot of beef vegetable with barely soup--a great comfort food supper on a cold and snowy winter day--along with some rustic sourdough bread.  Mmmmmm.