Vacation starts

Today was the first day of my 3-week chorus-free "vacation". No singing commitments, no rehearsals--just free Monday nights until we start rehearsing again on the 8th of January.

The world and all my other commitments still roll merrily along, of course, but it's all in one's perception of time and how it's allotted, isn't it?

After a luxurious sleep in, I spent several hours today in my studio. The biggest accomplishment was going from this last month . . .

. . . to finally this:

After that I sewed together all my scraps that were too small for the string bin and ended up extending my ongoing 2-1/2" scrappy border roll by nearly 2 yards!

Then I grabbed that newly-rediscovered Bethlehem star wall-hanging with the idea of doing some basic quilting through the star itself, on my Brother, using some invisible thread.

But when I unfolded it and turned it over, I discovered that not only was the star already quilted, so was one of the white quadrants!

That stencil I'd made . . .

. . . wasn't for the middle of the star, as I had misremembered--it was for the center of each white corner square, and I had already hand quilted one of them using white thread:

Last year I spent hours learning that detailed quilting that can't be seen is mostly a waste of time and effort. With that in mind, I concluded that if I wanted to hand quilt these quadrants, I should do it in red and green threads so my work could be seen. Therefore, the existing stitching would have to be removed.

If, on the other hand, I wanted to go back to the idea of machine quilting these quadrants with something to fill the area and get the project done, the existing stitching would have to be removed.

So I sat down with my cheaters and a good light and started pulling out stitches.

After I discarded my assumption that working with white thread on white fabric would be difficult (as black thread on black fabric is) and turned the piece over, the frogging went much faster. The thread was much easier to grab from the top, mainly because the stitches were larger, and it look less than an hour to unquilt this.

I've spritzed-then-blotted the square a couple of times in hopes the blue marks will disappear as promised. The whole thing is air drying on the ironing board at the moment, while I wind down my very satisfying first day of "vacation" with some veggie soup and a glass of wine.