Woman's Work: Good Housekeeping

She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. –Proverbs 31:27

The first block I did on the Woman's Work quilt was the Paper Towel block. The idea of appliquéing and embroidering a roll of paper towels was just so appealing to me. I mean, how cute can you get? That block was in the middle of the pattern and because I like order I had to go back to the beginning and work through the pattern's outlined sections { }. I got through section one {the most adorable broom with an embroidered quote} and part-way through section two {embroidered chore day blocks and a dustpan to go with the broom} when I realized that the embroidery in this quilt was kicking my timeline's butt {I wanted to finish one section every two weeks, in between other projects, and have the quilt finished in six months} and I had to come up with a new plan. The new plan is this: work on it when I can, keep moving forward and don't stress about the timeline.

Just because I wanted to see what I was up against, I counted out the major embroidery blocks in the quilt and discovered that there were nine; one in section one {already done!}, three in section two {Yesssss! } and the other five scattered throughout the rest of the sections. One of those sections with an embroidery block was the paper towel section. I saw that it would be to my advantage to finish off the blocks that are in the paper towel section because that would push me past the half-way mark on the embroidered blocks. I'm not sure if you really need to know all of this, but there it is; the crazy train that is my thought process, which lead me to doing these blocks out of order {and unless you have the pattern, you wouldn't know which order they were supposed to go in anyway} .

This Good Housekeeping embroidery sits in the lower center of the quilt and is another of my favorite blocks and one of the reasons I bought the pattern. Before I left the quilt shop with the pattern, and perhaps even before I got to the cash register with it, I knew exactly which white-on-white fabric from my stash I would use for this embroidery {I have to say here that my stash is not by any means extensive, but at the time I was working on the white-on-whites, picking up prints that were particularly appealing to me}. Unfortunately, I can't get a good picture of it to show you the neat sort of swirly vines that are in the fabric. If you click on the picture for a close-up, you can almost see the pattern. Photographs hardly ever do quilt blocks justice and I'm slightly frustrated that I can't show you what I want to about this block.

Lori has included several scripture references on the blocks in this quilt. I really like the one in this block from Proverbs {quoted above}. As I was working, I pondered the irony of me making a quilt about good housekeeping when I'm not such a great housekeeper myself. I wondered why, when I like order so much, do I let my house deteriorate into chaos so frequently? It suppose I find it hard to take satisfaction in something that is going to be undone so quickly. Also is is more fun to sew . I'm still looking for a better balance in my housekeeping as well as my sewing.

This cute bottle of window cleaner is the other block that goes in this section. I love the appliqué blocks because they go pretty quickly, even if they do have a bit of embroidery on them, like the spray on this one. I used a couple of fabrics from the Stephenie Meyer quilt in this block. The red is the batik I used for the borders, sashings and tulips blocks and the stem of the squirt mechanism is the white I used in the checkerboard. I think I am totally in love with the pretty yellow 100% cotton Carolina Gingham in the background. And I think I'm going to use it {on the bias } for the binding.

Up next: a vacuum cleaner with almost all appliqué and hardly any embroidery.