7 Days of New Years - Day 3

Well, contrary to what was predicted at the end of yesterday's post, I'm still working on the same stuff today.  The plan to go "simple" on "Old Tobacco Road" lasted all of a night!  I thought I was satisfied with the plan to "stipple" the center of the quilt but when I got up this morning, I decided to take a look at my "stitch pattern ideas" book to see if anything jumped out at me.  Turns out, a few things did!

I had originally wanted to use the vertical lines of the design as inspiration for the stitching and channel "tobacco leaves" as a motif.  The initial leaves I had sketched out were just free-form and when I looked up tobacco leaves, I didn't feel I had captured them nor was I sure how to do so.  Then I came across two motifs that I liked that both resonated and seemed doable at my skill level.  

Okay, but what about the stacked bars?  I hadn't had any inspiration for those yesterday but today I realized I could do the kind of stitching I did in the "Checkmate" quilt, I finished up back in November:

Some simple outline stitched zigzags would do the trick!  So the new plan looks like this:

Okay, but both would benefit from doing stabilizing stitching around the columns of bars prior to the decorative stitching.  Remember when I said yesterday that I thought that would take a lot longer than I might want to stitch?

You may not be able to tell it from the front....

....but it can be seen from the back!

Yeah, turns out it didn't take as long as expected!  So now I'm set up for the stitching in the center --- but not tonight!   Got to admit, getting up close and personal with the piecing gave me a chance to revisit all the projects the scraps in it came from.  Ahh, a little trip down memory lane while doing the stitching!

At this point, I'm going to break for some dinner and then spend the rest of the night on my cross stitch.  After all, tomorrow is another day towards the New Year!