In A Corner No More

 A very smart friend once told me that we will never finish that quilt that we're not working on. She is exactly right; we might be able to visualize it finished, or wish that it were, but all the visualizing, wishing, hoping and dreaming won't make it so! I am guilty of all of the above. This sampler quilt that is currently on the frame (and has been for eons!) has responded well to some focused attention. I have worked myself all the way down to the outer border and will remove it from the rails this afternoon to turn it. Only two more borders left!  Stay tuned for this one's glamour shots to be shared shortly.

And then there is this one. "Bless This House", an album quilt begun over five years ago and posted about here. I have nine of the albums blocks done and am ready to begin the top panel. I had painted myself in a corner by machine appliqueeing the year onto this center block. Anything done can be undone; right? I painstakingly unstitched the incriminating year of my blatant procrastination and updated the block today. Time to get busy, and there's no time like the present. I need to be a little bit more strict when holding myself accountable! Yes, I am working on my quilts, it seems to be the only way to get them finished; at least that's what I've been told!

Life is Good!

Bless This House

Welcome to our home. This is what you see when you enter in through the front door: stairs leading up to our converted attic space/now theater room, a chair holding a pillow proclaiming that "a spoiled rotten dachshund lives here" and a Singer treadle base with a glass top serving as an entrance hall table. Oh, yes, and on the wall directly in front of you is a wool applique wallhanging  beside a framed, embroidered sampler. The sampler was added today, I stitched it in 1975 and presented it to my then brand-new mother and father-in-law that year for Christmas.  They were building their home at that time and this sampler was proudly placed in their foyer a few months later when they moved in; there it hung, proudly, until a few weeks ago. With a heavy heart I took it down from the nail that supported it, dusted it off and carried it here. Yesterday their house went on the market for sale. I pray that special home will find a family soon, it needs one. This hand embroidered house blessing will hang in our home from now on. Every day when I walk past it I will remember, and my heart will smile. I pray that our own front door will "prove ever open to joy and love" as theirs did, for four-plus decades.

This cross stitch sampler was ordered, if memory serves, from an advertisement in the back of Good Housekeeping magazine. It was a kit, the linen was stamped and the floss was included. This blessing was inspired by a plaque that hung in the White House during the Eisenhower administration; the sentiment, however, is timeless.

Life is Good!

Christmas Cactus

In preparation for block # 2 of Bless this House, Christmas Cactus,  I traced the shapes onto fusible web and cut them out, roughly. I used flat, smooth stones to hold down my paper-backed fusible, they're souvenirs from a visit to the rocky coast of Maine last fall, they work perfectly for this! After that, I spread out the pattern placement sheet on my ironing board; where I attached one shape after another... working from the back of the design to the foreground. I pressed the fusible to the reverse side of each chosen fabric,  after removing the center portion of the paper and the fusible web, leaving only a quarter inch of the product inside each shape, then I carefully cut them out exactly on the pencil line. I crisply pressed the background fabric in preparation for machine appliqué, using several applications of heavy starch to give it stiff body.

Using the placement lines from the pattern sheet (underneath the background fabric) I pressed the pieces in place. Notice the leaf on the left;  it has just a small outline of fusible web around the edge, the paper is still attached. It will be peeled, flipped over and pressed into position.

Here is the block with all of the pieces in place, ready to be stitched down. I used a very small blanket stitch and stitched around each and every  appliqué  shape with a matching thread color.

Voilà! The completed Christmas Cactus block; my homework's done, what a good feeling.

Life is Good!