Channeling my inner Sue Spargo

All of a sudden we are nearing the middle of January....and, hoping I don't jinx it, we haven't lifted a snow shovel yet. I'm good with that!

Today I'm dreaming a bit of my perennial garden. Last summer it got zero attention so by the end of the season I wondered if I should just give up on the idea. Nope, this year my focus will be the garden and rejuvenating it. Now I just have to be patient for a few months!

Lately my slow stitching may be considered somewhat boring, but, funny enough, I don't mind it at all. I've been prepping pieces for my English Paper Piecing project, Tula Nova.

Here are the pieces so far....

When I began this quilt I was doing a bit of prep, then a bit of sewing. I soon realised that it made more sense to me to take the time to do all the prep-work before joining the pieces....I can't explain my thought process, but I'm happy with how this is going.

I'll be going to my monthly applique afternoon this week. I think I'll dive in to the prepped pieces and actually get going on it.

On Friday I attended the first class at Quilt Junction on embroidery stitches for wool applique. 

We each got a little Sue Spargo kit and instructions for our first four stitches.

I've only tried the Bullion Stitch once in my life. This one is a challenge, but will be worth mastering.

Here is my block after the first lesson. The red bumpy stitches are supposed to be the Bullion stitches....not bad for my first attempt, but not pretty either, lol....

This morning, I tore out the stitches and started over, determined to "get it"...

Oh my!!!, such  pretty little stitch.....my excitement was short-lived as I realised that I "only" had to repeat this another fifty times or so!!!

So I carried on for a bit. I will pick it up again later, but these stitches were enough for one sitting...

Hopefully by the time I get to the other side of the ladybug I will be a bit more even in my stitches....but I'm happy with this so far. I can't wait to see what we learn next month :)

I hope to do a bit of sewing today. I have two days to add to my Temperature quilt. I think that's how this quilt will progress, keeping track of the temperatures on my calendar daily, then doing the actual block construction twice a week or so.

You can see how it looks so far in this post.

It's Sunday, and you know what that means!....we get to visit Kathy to see what others are doing for Slow Sunday Stitching. I think I'll have an extra cup of coffee and visit the slow-stitchers to see what they are working on today.