A good day for soup and a quilt finish

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Most of these scraps were added previously. Under the pink and purple flower is all that remains of the original English paper pieced quilt (white and black stripes and green floral prints).

A couple of days ago I bought the necessary groceries for green bean and sausage soup. I was going to fix it yesterday, but better tasks emerged, and I put it off until today. Which was the perfect day because we started out with lots of marine layer unlike yesterday which was sunny from the get-go.

Yes it's August, but in Humboldt County, most days are good to have soup.

Most days are also good for a heavy-ish lap quilt. Well, many days are right for such a cozy. Last night, with a window behind me open, was the perfect temperature to hand-stitch, and hand-sew I did until I was too tired to stitch further. I really wanted to finish the quilt last night. It simply didn't happen.

The yellow-headed pin marks my stopping place.

This quilt has been taking up sofa space for...months. Not sure how many, as I don't keep track of when a quilt transitions from the sewing room to the living room. It's felt like a LONG TIME, but part of that is how for ages I have wanted to upcycle this particular quilt that I didn't make, but was given by my sister-in-law at least five years ago, a thrift store find she wasn't particularly attached to. Maybe six years ago; it feels like a LONG TIME, but lately time spins its own, well, timeline. Time goes faster than ever in my life, so it's hard to judge unless I look at pictures, but we've lived in Humboldt County for four years and I know this quilt, in its previous form, hung on the line at our Silicon Valley house, so yeah, this quilt has been through the proverbial wringer, but currently it's in the dryer, lol. It's a new baby, so to speak, and I can't wait to display it in full sometime tomorrow.

For now photos are of the last little bit being stitched earlier today. This morning before I started soup, then after said soup was enjoyed for lunch. It was slow-going because the center of the quilt was a little poofy despite being pinned and I wanted to avoid an obvious paunch as best I could. Taking many of the final stitches one by one, I adjusted the gathered fabric, hoping that it won't be awkward after the laundering.

Finished! And as a spoiler, once out of the dryer no paunch remained, woo hoo!

In another half-hour I'll know how successful I was.

In the meantime, I wanted to write about completing this quilt, in that it's always nice to note a finish. Which opens the door for other projects to stretch their wings, ahem. I've plotted out how the Mandolin quilt will be arranged, but I truly need to nail down ALL the edge and corner blocks before starting to sew the whole thing together. Sigh. So I've counted out all the necessary paper pieces, bagged them up, and retrieved the fabrics for said pieces. Tomorrow I'll press those prints, cut them, then start that process, which will eventually lead to another completed quilt.

One after another, like how days, weeks, and months stack up. Like making soup this morning, then I don't have too cook for a day or three. My husband is recovering nicely, in fact he's currently outside, enjoying the garden. I hope he was able to close the door to the chicken run, which really means I hope the chickens made their way into the coop without dawdling. Last night they kept faking me out, going into the coop then turning right around and coming back outside, cheeky chicks! Nadia had been a straggler, during which time I snapped the photo below.

But the dryer just chimed, EEP! Time to go collect a newly refurbished quilt. More about it soon.... 

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