Slow Weekend Stitching

I am almost embarrassed to tell you all that I am STILL stitching down the binding on my huge cow quilt.  I haven't made many opportunities for hand stitching in the last week and I have missed it!  My job required me to do copious traveling last week, and in the evenings I was just too tired for much of anything.

So after errands and chores yesterday morning, I settled on the couch with plans to hand stitch.  As I watched the Olympics, inch by inch the binding was stitched.  I'm almost three-fourths of the way around - I feel like I'm working on a marathon!

I did take the quilt up to the camp last weekend so I could hang it from the deck and get a full-size picture.  It's so large it doesn't even fit on the top railing - I had to wrap about 5 inches around the corner support post!

As soon as I finish this post and link up with Kathy's hand-stitching linky party, I'm going back to the sofa for some more binding stitching.  I'm ready to have this finished so I can move on to something else!

For those who are still reading, here's an updated picture of McKenzie.  She wanted to help me in my sewing room today, but there's just too much mischief for her to get into there.  I think I'll have to do some puppy play with her before I go sit 'n stitch - then maybe she'll nap a little while I'm sewing!

The Cow Jumped Onto the Quilt!

Sunday morning is fast becoming my hand stitching time.  The dogs always seem to wake up around 5 AM and I get up to let them out so DH can sleep in.  It's nice to have the house to myself and I invariably wind up on the couch watching reruns of "Law and Order" and working on the current hand stitching project.

I'm still working on stitching down the binding on the ginormous quilt I mentioned last week.  This is a scrappy, scrappy quilt that was meant to use up a huge stash of cow novelty fabrics I accumulated back in the early 1990s.  I turned to the queen of use-it-up scrap quilts - Bonnie Hunter - for block inspiration, although my layout is different from hers.

I worked on piecing all the blocks during weekends at our camp;  I really had that treadle sewing machine humming!  Eventually I took a stack of blocks home and arranged them on the design wall.  Holy cow - it was one of the biggest quilts I'd ever created!  After adding the sashing, it came out to be almost 100" by 100"!  

I took the finished top to Cindy Braiwick, my local longarm quilter.  I told her I had no specific ideas for quilting and to let her imagination roam.  She quilted a whole 'nother menagerie onto the quilt.  Above:  flying pigs

Cats in the moonlight

Dancing cows

I managed to get a little over a quarter of the binding stitched down this morning.  I'm hoping I'll get some more hand stitching time later today.

If you enjoy hand stitching, be sure to stop by Kathy's Quilts to see what other hand stitchers are working on today!