This and That

I have been doing a little of this and a little of that for a few days. I can only work on stitching on white over black lines with black thread for so long before I have eye strain. I usually stop and do a little  cleaning up or go and start dinner or some thing that will give my eyes a rest. I also am inclined to do something like  reading or using the computer, neither of them give my eyes a rest.

I finally finished the machine stitching on the circles and there is a bit of hand stitching to do. There are a few areas that have  small dots or loops that I won't sew with the machine but they need more quilting. I am going to use 2 strands of white Trilobal Polyester to put one stitch  in these dots and loops. I am sure this will be visually demanding and I am going to think first about drawing these tiny things again if I plan to stitch them.

You can see here where I have stitched in the first few  little  dots and the first flower head; all the rest of the stitching is done. I  do not plan to stitch every line that I drew but some areas need to be quilted a little more to flatten them.  This is enlarged many times. Those little flower heads are barely 1/4 inch. I can go back  and fix the  places where I  didn't quite hit the line with my machine stitching by filling in with  fine (.01) Pigma pen.

Yesterday I moved my machine back  to the other side of the room and put things in order and then promptly made chaos out of order again. I  decided to work on a couple of houses and dragged out many boxes of  fabric, many of them filled with scraps and smallish pieces. I never remember just how long it takes me to do something improvisational. I agonize over every fabric choice and I dig through all the boxes to find something I had in my hand "just a minute ago". In the end I only  had one house finished and I didn't make it wonky as I intended because I got caught up in making it the right size.

I chose my inhabitants first and made my other choices based on that. As usual I am second guessing myself. My step in front of the doorway doesn't look  like a step, (my supposed to be) tropical sky looks like snow falling, I got it all together and realized I forgot the sun and now the piece I wanted to put there doesn't fit and I am not sure I like the colors. Ah well........ it  is really OK and there are more  houses to build. In a  few weeks  I will decide  I like it after all. Sometimes I need to put a little space between the sewing of one element and what I do with the final product of my labor; by then I have forgotten what I had in mind and am able to look with fresh eyes at what I made.

LOL, sometimes what I ended up with goes in the box of unused blocks.