Green eyed monster

Rusty was playing on my sewing table this morning, forcing me to take a break. The green eyes go rather nicely with his red fur. Ever wonder why “pet eye” goes beyond the standard red eye? Animals have a reflective layer in the back of their eyes behind the retina called the tapetum. This layer enhances their night vision. The colour of the tapetum gives you blue, green, yellow, or white eye effect. Ginger has a greenish-blue eyeshine. Rusty was digging around on my already messy table, intensely interested in a quilt sandwich that I’d been practising my Free Motion Quilting on. The backing on it is an old pillowcase. It’s been washed a million times, but I guess it still holds irresistible scents for a cat. I think he was trying to wrap himself up in it. All that movement, combined with his beautiful long fur generated lots of static electricity, so he ended up wearing some loose paper patterns. How undignified!

I’ve been working on FMQ scale – sewing a stipple pattern in different sizes. Two words – not easy! I’m not very happy with my results, so no pictures yet. My quarter-inch scale is very jagged. And my half inch scale is very… jagged. And my one-inch scale isn’t much better. Of course, Rusty’s assistance hasn’t been helping.

I picked up this frame at our local thrift store last week. It was such a great deal for $1.50. It’s called a tapestry frame, but it can be used for embroidery, too. I have some metal hoops, but they’re pretty rough on my work, tearing through cloth or stretching my stitches out of shape. It’s probably something that I’m doing wrong, but I can’t wait to use my new frame. This is a dragon (Happy Year of the Dragon) that I did as a practice about 15 years ago. I did pretty good with the long/short stitches. But I didn’t finish it.

I’ve also hit a little bump in my Mexican Star - I ran out of the yellow fabric. I know I can get some more online, but I’m going to see first if I can find it in Kamloops next week. I only need about another half meter. I don’t buy much quilting fabric at Fabricland for several reasons, but I know that last year they had some of this Northcott material there. Hoping that they’d still have some is a long shot, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed.If not, I’ll have to order it from Toronto. And, of course, whoever orders just half a meter by mail?

Until next time,