Wednesday Updates

This week I finally got up the gumption to start quilting my Farmer's Wife.  Monday I quilted the top border, which will be continuous around the quilt but the rest of it will have to wait until I'm done with the central part and rotate it.

 And then I rolled it and began quilting feathers on the setting triangles.  My opinion of my own machine-quilting ability, as I am quilting, ranges from "I suck at free-motion quilting" to "Wow, this is actually pretty," with the most common setting being something like, "It is what it is."  It's probably good for my soul or something.

This is where I stand as of this morning.  The next bit will be the first zigzag row of blue sashing strips -- I'm thinking a leafy vine thing, and maybe pumpkin seeds in the cornerstones.  And then every single one of the 111 blocks will hopefully be just as much fun to quilt as it was to piece.  Well, except for the fact that machine quilting is not as much fun as piecing scrappy blocks from vintage fabrics.  It gave me lots of blog fodder as I was piecing them, so it has the potential to give me even more as I slowly quilt this thing.

This is last week's picture of the socks -- there may have been about 3/4" of progress on those size 0 needles, but no more and probably less.  I'll be glad to get a knitting project finished... maybe another week, maybe two.  I'm reading How Civilizations Die, which might explain my bleak thoughts about my machine quilting skills and the futility of knitting on size 0 needles.  It's a good book with a lot to think about on every page.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday and the Yarn-along.