Recapping Some Odds and Ends

I had expected to be posting a "Slow Sunday Stitching" post today but I didn't do any stitching on Sunday!  However, there was some quilting (and related) activity over the last week.

First off:  She's Back!!

Usually when I put my machine in for service she's gone anywhere from a few weeks to a month.  I expected the next call from the service shop to be to give me the diagnosis for what ailed her and to talk about what would need to be done and the cost to fix her up.  So I was surprised when the call that came last Thursday was actually to say she was ready for pickup!  Turns out she just needed a new bobbin case because the old one was "chewed up".  Have I been working it that hard?!?  I picked her up on Friday and welcomed her back into the fold!

However, this also threw my rhythm off a bit because I had settled in for spending the rest of the month doing hand work. I had finished hand basting "High Strung +2" two days before:

...and had begun thinking about how I was going to baste the wholecloth quilt I plan to work on this year.

Well, basting means layering and layering means I need to decide on a batting.  The first debate is cotton or polyester?  I have to admit, I usually prefer the "hand" (texture, weight and drape) of cotton battings in finished quilts.  But I've also long heard that polyester battings are easier to needle for hand quilting.

Looking in my batting cabinet, I only had one queen size polyester batt on hand, a package of Hobbs Poly Down.  Since this is meant to be a summer quilt/spread and I want to try to attempt some trapunto effects, this could be a good choice.  However, I'd also like to compare it to a cotton batt but all the queen-size cotton batts I have are "natural" colored (oh, and one black batt for a future Amish project already stashed).  The good news is that Connecting Threads had sent an email that they had batts on sale for 30% off and when I checked, they offered Hobbs 80/20 Bleached, something I have not seen in the local shops.  So I put in an order for that. 

The next step on that project will be to think some more about the additions I want to make to the stitching designs, get them marked and then test out my ideas for executing the trapunto effects.

With the machine back I'm now debating about how soon to get back to machine work.  I already know of a couple of projects I want to tackle.  I decided that before I did that, I really wanted to finish up one more bit of outstanding hand work.  Last year I had finished up this little redwork embroidery project:

It was made to be added to one of my early quilts but the update never made it to the top of the "To Do" list last year.  I picked it up and decided to finish it:

However, whereas usually a finish is a good thing, in this case it may not be!  I'll go into a little more into detail on that in a separate post.  I think the "turn of events" may have turned me off a little to doing any more hand work over the weekend.  But I do want to keep up the momentum for hand work as well as organize the machine work projects and ease them back into my daily rhythm.  So time to embrace a new week and see what it brings!