More wiggles than you can count

We’ve been getting some lovely weather with the occasional crappy day(s) in between, just to keep life interesting. I’ve been able to leave my vegetable seedlings outside overnight for the past week, but Wednesday and Thursday were so cold that I brought them inside again for the night. Yesterday was so warm (my partner would call it HOT) that I left the seedlings outside. Yep, mistake. No frost, but the chilly temperatures made the leaves on my less hardy tomato plants droop. I sure hope they perk back up. I think they’ll be coming inside again tonight, no matter how warm it gets.

Still keeping up with SewCalGal’s fantastic Free Motion Quilting Challenge. May’s instruction comes from Leah Day who always has the most interesting ideas for FMQ. I’ve followed her blog for over a year, and she is so very enthusiastic and talented. For the Challenge, she introduced us to “double stippling”. Two versions, one with wiggles and one with “tracks” although mine look more like French fries. First you do a large meandering line, and then you sew back and forth across it, filling in the space evenly (or trying to). The first few practices I did gave me real tension headaches (the sewing machine kind) as I jerked the sandwich back and forth. Leah made it look so easy – she always does – and it is easy, but it takes practice. The last pieces I did were better than the first, which is always good, and the tension was much better as I had more of an idea of which direction I should be moving in. It was a lot of fun sewing it, and reminded me of those old Mario Brother games where you had to make all the pills fit inside the bottle in a certain way as fast as you could before everything jammed up at the bottleneck. LOL! I’m sure that with more practice, it won’t feel so tense, but I think it will still be loads of fun. Thanks Leah! And thanks SewCalGal for organizing this awesome FMQ Challenge.

I leave you with Mr. Goofball, who was mostly asleep and totally unconcerned with outward appearances.

Until next time,