We got back to Morro Bay this afternoon and I finished sewing the binding to the third placemat in the set of three that I’d been making for my cousin.
Here is a view of their backsides:
Reversible!
This was a fun little project and a good way to use up scrap fabric. I’ve been enjoying the sewing and quilting process. Now I’m thinking of sewing more napkins or making a quilted table runner.
We’re at the Ventura homestead this weekend, and once again, the problem with keeping two residences has reared its ugly head. I was hand-sewing the binding on my third quilted placemat, and I ran out of thread. I hadn’t thought to bring more thread with me, and all of my sewing notions are up in the Morro Bay house. So I can’t finish the placemat until we drive back to Morro Bay tomorrow.
This isn’t the first time that Sean and I have been at one place and realized that something we needed was sitting at the other place, 150 miles and two counties away. Last week Sean brought his computer up to Morro Bay and discovered that he’d left the power cord back in Ventura.
But there are worse problems in the world.
In the meantime, I have this:
So close to done!
All that remains now is to hand-sew the binding in place.
Remember the nine-patch blocks that I sewed last weekend, and the quilted placemat that was just waiting for me to hand-sew the binding in place?
So I finally got around to doing that.
Hooray! It’s done!
And it’s reversible!
I also spent some time today going through the fabric stash and slicing, pressing, and sewing together binding strips for the other two placemats that I am making for my cousin. I plan to work on them a little at a time this week, so they should be done in a few days.
I got all the way to sewing the binding (or border, as Sean calls it) around the quilted placemat. Now all I need to do is sew it down by hand using the ladder stitch.
Yeah, that’s probably not going to happen any time soon.
Lately I’ve been on a sewing kick. I’ve set aside the knitting for now and am working on making a few quilted placemats out of the nine-patch squares that I sewed over the weekend.
It rained last night and all morning. Given California’s current drought, this was a big deal. I stayed inside most of the day and sewed nine-patch quilt blocks. It was very satisfying to go through the stacks of 4.5″ squares that I’d cut several months ago, play with combinations of colors and patterns, and piece together these colorful arrangements. I’m thinking about making more placemats, maybe a couple of table runners, or even a small quilt. In the meantime, aren’t they pretty?
Sean is the breakfast maker in our household. He always cooks my eggs exactly the way I like them, over medium. This morning’s eggs were so pretty that I had to take a picture of them. As I was framing the shot, it occurred to me that a lot of objects in the photo tell you a lot of things about us. There are the quilted placemats that I made, along with a luchador cocktail napkin that I sewed. In the background to the left are an aqua chair that I upcycled (I should post a blog entry with Before and After photos of that project), along with a white side table that I also painted. And Sean’s t-shirt tells you who he’s supporting in Major League Soccer.
Our meal is also reflective of our backgrounds: you take a Filipino girl from Hawaii and a Southern boy from Florida, have them living in coastal California for a dozen years, and you’ve got a breakfast of rice, eggs, vegan sausage, and unsweetened iced tea. Total Hawaiian-Californian-Southern fusion. And it was good.
I got home from work–10 hours of what is my Monday after a 3-day weekend–and I was fully prepared to camp out on the couch for the rest of the evening. But, nooooo. Sean said, “We have to run today.”
“Can’t today be a rest day?” I asked.
“No,” Sean said, “because tomorrow is supposed to be the rest day.”
Drat. He was going to be disciplined and stick to the half marathon training plan that I’d printed out and stuck to the refrigerator door.
So I changed into my running clothes and put on my running shoes, and we went out for a forty-minute run, according to schedule. I spent the first half hour alternating between being mad at my husband and trying to distract myself from the various aches and pains that were developing along my hamstrings and shins and the arches of my feet. I spent the last ten minutes focused on just getting home and putting this run behind me.
Just as it is with every long run that I complete, by the time I got home, I felt pretty good about what I’d accomplished, and I was back to liking my husband again. Especially since he’d made puttanesca while I was at work, and we would be able to sit down to eat in a matter of minutes.
I didn’t take any photos of our dinner, but here is one from our 4th of July breakfast that Sean made. My contribution was the handmade quilted placemats and handmade napkins.
Even though he won’t let me slack off the training schedule, he does make the best breakfast.
365 Days Handmade 
