Making progress...

and a few other things :).  Yesterday was NOT a good day -- well, I've had worse but this is pretty high up there.  A bolt of paper back fusible that was sitting on a pile on my sewing machine table decided to do a nose dive to the floor and knocked over an almost full bottle of Diet Pepsi in the process... luckily, most of it went onto the carpeted floor and my chair cushion.  I decided that I can take a hint as well as the next person and once I finished what I was working on, I started cleaning some of the area around my machine.  The offending bolt is back up there, but at an angle that will prevent it from knocking any more bottles over.  I didn't do a whole lot of cleaning but I made a little progress.

This morning, bright and early, I decided that today I was going to use up two dresden plate blocks that I experimented on before deciding that I didn't like them.  I had already found some blue fabric that was sturdier than quilting cotton but maybe not heavy enough for home decor...  - heavy enough for a tote bag.

First, I put each block onto some scrap warm and natural batting and did straight stitching in the ditches with my walking foot.  Then I realized that I wanted to have the bag lined, so grabbed some other scrap fabric and cut two pieces to fit on the backs of each of the two blocks and, again, went around here and there with stitch in the ditch and basted the three layers together.

Then I cut strips 3" wide and the length of the blocks... put two strips wrong sides together and chose a small zigzag stitch ( too lazy to mess with re-threading my serger) to sew them to one side of a block.  See how nice and neat it is....  Wait for it....

See the light colored fabric at the top?  Well that's the strip that I just stitched on ( with the tiny zigzag)... I stitched it with the wrong side out!!!..... Ripping it out wasn't all that hard and didn't take all that long, but it didn't look as nice as the first photo, that's for sure.

Luckily, that was the worst... oh wait, when I placed the blue strip and neutral strip together for the bottom of the bag... I forgot to lay the neutral right side up... Oh well, it's on the inside... I'm not changing it.

So here is the bag.... 

and here's the other side....   

Maybe not my best work, but it's really not all that bad...

So, yesterday when the bolt knocked over the Diet Pepsi, I was working on appliqued mug rugs to go with a table runner I had done the top on a couple days ago.  The tops were done but I still had to sandwich and quilt them....

After I finished the bag, that's what I did.... either the photo is a little fuzzy or my eyes are worse than I thought ( darned allergies)....

I think the photographer is a little fuzzy along with the photo...  I'd take another one but this is Tuesday night and AGT is on - and I've got a couple other things to do before I can watch.  Maybe tomorrow... oh wait, hubby has dr. appointment, then we have to get groceries, and then I'm going to visitation for the great grandmother of one of my grandsons.  Ok, maybe Thursday.

Oh!  Got an email from our gas/electric supplier yesterday.... said we've used more electricity in the past two weeks than we did the entire previous month.  Well, no duh Sherlock!... It's been HOT here and the a/c seems to be running almost constantly during daytime hours.  We're OLD; we can't handle the heat.

On that note...

take care....

stay COOL....

ttyl