A Good Day

Good morning, my friends. Thanks to the many of you who stopped by to wish me a happy birthday yesterday. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we had to make a short grocery shopping trip, and it was “senior discount day” at our store. One must be at least 50 to qualify. I told the young man at the checkout stand that we were seniors, and that I supposed he might be surprised by that, given our youthful appearances. When Mike told him it was my birthday, he said, “Oh, today must be the first time you’ve qualified!” If there had been a tip jar, I’d have left him $10. Growing older is a privilege, and I’m grateful to have so many good friends along for the journey. I like this quote from John Lennon:

“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.” 

With all the running around I did yesterday, there wasn't much time for sewing. I managed to get another block quilted on the Merry, Merry Snowmen. These are large blocks. I'm realizing that one block in a day might be my limit. I broke yesterday's block into two images. This is the bottom half. I outlined the applique, did some filler in the background, and some criss-crosses in the line of blocks at the top.

For the top half, I did pretty much the same thing. I quilted snowflakes into the four blocks at the top, using a cookie cutter as a template.

Now I've left it needle down at Block 6. Since I have PT today, I'm not entirely sure I'll have any time for this. 

Also, being a PT day, I need to make dinner this morning. I'm going to put together a meatloaf, and then I'll just need to put it in the oven when I get home. Also, tomorrow is Mike's birthday. He's requested Creme Brulee for Two for dessert tomorrow, and I'll make that up today.

The rest of this post will be about our dinner out last night. If you're not interested in these food posts, then feel free to jump off here. No hard feelings.

We went to the Charthouse, which has one of the best views in the city. This was the view from our table. It was a cloudy day yesterday, but the sun peeked out just about the time we arrived.

We enjoyed a nice bottle of wine. This was a gift from Erik and Mae. They brought several bottles with them when we had our family dinner last month. They left this unopened bottle with us, and so we took it to the restaurant last night. So good. That's somebody's husband sitting across the table from me. Don't tell anyone, okay?

We each started with a Caesar salad. The Caesar salad at the Charthouse is especially good.

I had my favorite coconut crunchy shrimp. The dipping sauce on the right is my favorite.

Mike had the prime rib.

We each had this mini hot lava cake for dessert. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

I was given this little red velvet cake as a bonus for my birthday. That little "Happy Birthday" piece is made of chocolate.

So that was a good dinner and a good day. The next day or two are going to be pretty busy for me. I'm looking forward to some R&R by Friday. For now, it's time for some slow-stitching, and then I'll get busy with my kitchen tasks. Have a good day, Everybody!

Cinco de Mayo

Good morning, my friends. I'm just home from a nice breakfast with Sue. Aside from that, not much has happened this morning. There hasn't even been time for slow-stitching. As I write, I'm waiting for Mike to drink a cup of coffee, and then we'll head off to the grocery store. We're eating dinner out tonight, but the afternoon will be my own. No plans except doing whatever I want to do.

So let's back up to yesterday, shall we? It was a luxuriously slow day. Not having to sandwich any more quilts put me in a good mood, right from the get-go. Since I'm focusing on getting more quilting action this year, it seemed like the best place to start was at the quilting machine. The Merry, Merry Snowmen are from Bunny Hill Designs.

One of the things I like about these patterns is that there are photographs of the quilt that show the quilting. Each block is shown on heavy card stock, and it gives me some ideas about how to quilt the blocks. You can see how they did the first two blocks in the image below.

Of course, it took me a bit to get the machine set up. I needed to switch out the foot for the regular universal foot. (My last project was using a square foot to quilt straight lines.) As usual, my quilting fairy godmother, Ila, made sure I had the right threads for the job. Thank you, Ila. On top, I'm using this Coats & Clark 30 weight variegated thread.

It's only slightly variegated, but mainly tan.

On the bottom, I'm using this light tan Omni thread from Superior Threads. This is a 40 weight thread.

It's all one color, and a good match for the quilt back.

Before I could start any stitching, Smitty checked outside for signs of any impending invasion. With his reassurance, I could quilt in complete safety.

So let's just check the tension. I flipped a piece from the back to the front. Top tension looks good.

And the back looks good too. It's always nice when everything is properly adjusted without having to fiddle with any knobs or screws.

There are nine blocks in this quilt. I started at the left edge in the middle with Block 4. First, I quilted around the edges of the applique.

Looking at the pattern image, the background here was just a simple filler. I didn't use the same one they'd used, but I found one on Pinterest that I liked. A hook and two loops followed by another hook, and on we go.

For this square in a square cornerstone, I did pretty much what they did in the pattern.

For this rectangle, they'd done a diagonal grid. I did a Christmas tree here. Sorry it doesn't show up very well. I've messed with the brightness and contrast to try to make it more visible.

And here, I outlined the snowman and then did a little looping line.

Here's how that looks from the back.

My goal was to do three blocks per day, but I spent so much time setting up the machine, I decided to stop after this first one. If I do two blocks per day from here on, I'll have this ready for binding by the weekend. When I left it yesterday, it was needle down on Block 5. If there's time today, I'll start there.

It was lunch time. I first went outside to check the watering on the annuals. While I was out, I took pictures of every blooming thing. This is my favorite rhododendron, pretty much in full bloom now. You can see the dogwood in the background.

There's a carpet of blue from the lithodora.

This azalea is so bright I have to back off on the saturation when I edit my pictures.

This rhododendron has more buds than open flowers, but it's trying its best to catch up with the one at the front of the house.

There are lots of flowers on the blueberries. I'm excited about these.

We're seeing some cherries on the cherry trees. They bloomed at a good time. We should have lots of cherries this year.

The first flowers are appearing on the tomatoes.

And after a long wait, the replacement poppies have finally sprouted.

This peony is still being a teaser. I'm thinking by next week, we'll see some flowers.

Here's another rhododendron with more buds than blooms.

Okay, and on the slow-stitching front, I finished Block 7 for Le Jardin.

My first stop in the sewing room was to trace the Santa Quartet.

After that, I wanted to put borders on the block for Le Jardin, but I first fixed the border on the previous block. I neglected to add the cornerstones to this originally, and so I did that first.

Sadie helped me with that.

And then I could put borders on Block 7. This one will be in the middle of the quilt, and so it has cornerstones at all four corners.

Here are the seven blocks I have for this quilt so far.

While we watched the news last night, I took the first stitches on the Santa Quartet.

Smitty was exhausted after a day of guarding the furtress. I found him napping in the afternoon sunshine.

Okay, so that brings me to time to head out to the grocery store. It's not my favorite thing to do on this, my birthday, but Mike's birthday is Thursday, and need to pick up some things to make his birthday breakfast of Eggs Benedict. Since I have PT tomorrow, today will have to work. And so I need to be on my way. Happy Cinco de Mayo, everybody. Don't drink too many margaritas tonight, okay?

Final Four

Good morning, my friends. It gives me great pleasure to announce that all the quilt sandwiches are finished. It feels as if I've been given a new lease on life. There were just four more to finish yesterday. First up was The Story of My Day.

Next...the Kittens quilt. This one was fun to stitch.

Next was the fourth and final Shop Hop quilt.

And, finally, happily, the recently finished Land & Sea quilt.

They're all stacked up in the sewing room now. There are 16 pictured here.

And then, the Merry, Merry Snowmen are teed up on my quilting machine ready for me to get going on the quilting. Probably I'll start on this today. As I've said, I'm making quilting my focus for the year as I try to get some of these old projects finished up. As much as I can, I'm going to try to do a little quilting every day. Today seems like a good time to start.

That would have been enough for a day, but I still had those unfinished headrests bothering me. After sitting for a while, and in the last few minutes before I needed to start dinner, I decided to sew the Velcro onto the headrests. I used a blanket stitch for this. With the right kind of sewable Velcro, this was a quick job.

Here's how that looks from the front.

And then we took them out to the RV to attach them to the recliners. As a reminder, this is how they looked without the covers.

And there we go. It's not a perfect solution, but it's an inexpensive one.

Okay, so today will be a day of what passes for normal. I have a few things to catch up on. For one thing, I haven't done my PT exercises this week, and I have PT again on Wednesday. I'll do those today. Although the sandwiching process was plenty physical, I was able to do it with virtually no shoulder pain. Also, I need to make May's orange inverted star for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. As you might guess, housework has gone begging over the past several days. I have one easy housekeeping chore, and I need to do some laundry. 

Probably, tomorrow's post will be later in the day. It's my birthday tomorrow, and my friend Sue has invited me to breakfast. Also, Mike and I need to make a short grocery shopping trip, and then we're eating dinner out tomorrow night. If I can squeeze in time for blogging, it will mostly likely be after lunch. 

It's going to be good to get back to some "regular" sewing today. I'm looking forward to it. First, though, slow-stitching, as always. Le Jardin is on the home stretch, and I expect to finish it this morning.