Big Finish, Little Finish

Good morning, my friends. It was an all slow-stitching day yesterday, and I was able to finish off two quilts. Yay me! Before any sewing could be done, though, I wanted to do some things outside. Thunder and lightning were in our forecast, and so there was no time to waste. The lightning never materialized, as far as I could tell. Later in the afternoon, we had one big thunder clap, and that was all. It rained off and on, but really, nothing to write home about weather-wise. (You'll note that I am writing about it, however.)

Outside, I filled the bird feeders and then took a walk around. It's been a couple of days since I checked on things. This Red Cardinal clematis seems puny this year when compared with years past. It’s still putting out flowers, but not as many as previous years.

Right beside it, the purple hydrangea is covered in flowers. 

It’s a large bush. In a few more days, it should be spectacular.

Around back, this poor little thing didn’t get watered enough when we were traveling in Alaska last year. It’s much smaller than it was before, but it is surviving and blooming.

It has both blue…

And pink flowers on the same plant.

To its right, the variegated hydrangea is doing just fine. 

It too is covered in flowers at the moment.

The vegetable garden is looking good. It can probably go a few days without hoeing again. Checking the bee garden, I noticed some St. John’s Wort has joined the party. We never know what we’ll get in the bee garden, and so I keep scanning it for more color whenever I’m out there.

The Checkers dahlia is in full form.

I expect we’ll begin to see more from the Fuzzy Wuzzy dahlia soon. So far, it has just this one flower, but more buds on the way.

In the greenhouse, there are several tennis-ball sized tomatoes and more that are smaller. I believe it’s going to be a good year for slicing tomatoes.

More flowers have appeared on the Stargazer Lily. You can also see the deer have been nibbling at it.

This is the calla lily I mentioned a few days ago. It is putting out another shoot where I’ve marked with a red arrow. If it blooms, it will have a pink flower. Maybe we’ll see something from it this year.

The cherries are deepening in color. These are probably still at least a week away.

The blueberries are driving me crazy, ripening one berry at a time, it seems.

Okay, so back inside, I went to work on the block for “Le Jardin.” It was close enough to being finished I spent a little extra time on it. It still needs borders. I’ll work on this today.

With that finished, a stitching emergency was imminent. My next stop was to head directly downstairs where I could trace the “Love Sampler” for this morning’s stitching pleasure. Phew! Close call on that stitching emergency.

Satisfied that my stitching self woud be safe with a new project, I was ready to spend some time finishing off the quilt binding. Sadie was my helper cat for this.

With her assistance, I turned the fourth and final corner, and then stitched it to the end.

There’s a wall downstairs where I hang some of the larger quilts for display, switching them out seasonally. I was ready for a change, and so we hung it there. It ends up at 55 x 78 inches.

And that was my goal for June’s

So I’ve finished with a day or two to spare.

After that, I had to decide whether to spend time in the sewing room or finish off the Hawksbill Honu. I decided I was still in a slow-stitching zone, and it seemed like a good way to spend the remainder of the day. It was a quick trip around for that binding, and I had myself a second finish. This ends up at 21 x 24 inches.

Okay, and that brought me to the end of my sewing day. 

For dinner last night, I tried a new recipe for Creamy Tuscan Lobster Pasta. This was very tasty. We liked it a lot.

Lobster tails have been on sale at our grocery store, and so it seemed like a good time to try this. I made just half the recipe. The lobster tails were small, and so I asked for three. Earlier in the day, I dropped those puppies in a pan of boiling water, cooked them, removed their shells, and then cut them up to use in the pasta. They were refrigerated until just at the end of finishing off the dish. 

I made it pretty much as written. The recipe would have you divide the tomatoes, cooking some at the beginning, and adding the rest toward the end. That didn’t work very well since most everything was already hot and plate-ready while the newest addition of tomatoes still needed to cook some. In the future, I’d just add them all at once. There didn’t seem to be any advantage to adding them later. It’s a keeper. I’ll make it again.

Okay, so today I’m going to be spending some time in the kitchen. Maybe as much as a year ago, I learned I could freeze egg yolks or egg whites that had been separated and not used. I’ve been freezing them in zip-lock bags, occasionally using one or two, here and there. Recently, though, with all the birthday creme brulees and Father’s Day Eggs Benedict, I’ve accumulated way too many frozen egg whites. 

It’s embarrassing to admit that I currently have 27 egg whites in my freezer. (By the way, egg yolks can also be frozen, and I’ve used frozen [thawed] egg yolks to make hollandaise sauce. You wouldn’t know the difference.) I’m going to try a couple of things today. In the process, I’m hoping to use all of the egg whites. I’ll say more about that in tomorrow’s post. Also, I’m going to make some more watermelon sorbet. There is still puree left from the last batch.

If there’s time for sewing, I’d like to get the borders sewn on the block for “Le Jardin.” Also, I’d like to make July’s aqua inverted star. That will probably take me to the end of the day. If there’s still time left, I can start working my way through my list of WIP’s. There’s always plenty to do to keep me busy.

All right, my friends. I hope y’all enjoy your Sunday. We’ve had some weird weather here, but it seems as if things will improve over the next week. I hope your summer weather is treating you well.

Slow Stitching Ahead

Good morning, my friends. It turned into a pretty good day yesterday. We were expecting quite a bit of rain. It was gray and cloudy when we left home, but dry. We had our breakfast, ran our errands, did our grocery shopping, and had it all put away before noon. And then, it turned into a pretty nice afternoon with sunshine for most of the day. Today we're expecting more rain. If the forecast is to be believed, we'll have thunder and lightning by this afternoon. We're keeping our fingers crossed we won't lose power. A word to the wise (that would be me): Get out and fill those bird feeders early. 

Before we left, I had some time to spend on the Birdbath block. This is stitching up pretty quickly. It's possible I could finish it this morning.

It'll need borders added to it, but that won't stop me from moving on to the "Short" project on my list. There are 21 projects on my short list. I asked Mr. Random which one I should do next.

Ahhhh...17. ♪♪It was a very good year.♫  And number 17 on my list happens to be this "Love Sampler" from Kathy Schmitz. 

I've done a couple of her samplers..."Liberty"

and "Bumble."

Her samplers are fun to stitch for the variety of embroidery stitches included. For this one, she would have me use a Valdani perle cotton floss. Since I still have plenty of DMC 321 (Christmas Red), I'll stick with that.

When we were finished with our morning's outing, I was able to spend some time on my quilt binding, turning the third corner. I should have no problem finishing this off today.

There was some decision-making to do in the sewing room. Happily, my cat was there to give his  purrfessional recommendations.

Having realized that "Tulip Time" was finished and ready for quilting, I cut a back and binding strips for that. Now it'll go on the list of small-quilts-to-be-quilted.

Mainly, I just wanted to get it out of the way so that I could sew the binding on "Hawksbill Honu." That'll be next after I finish the binding on "Seasons."

And then I turned my attention to finishing off this little "Bunny Bait" quilt. It started as a single quilt block 12-1/2 inches square. I wanted to give it a bright green border to start. It took me a long time to find fabrics I liked for this. For one thing, I was literally scraping the bottom of my green scrap bin to come up with a strip of this bright green long enough to make it around.

And then I searched and searched and searched for some scraps of the border fabric used in the quilt below.

I could not find a strip, a scrap, a thread, a morsel...nothing. I can only think I used every last square inch of it when I made this baby quilt for one of Matthew's friends. 

Okay...I give up. Moving on, I found this orange in my yardage. It has been in my stash positively forever. There was plenty for a border and for a back, and that's what I used.

And then I used the last little bit of that green stripe to cut binding strips. It ends up at 18-1/2 inches square. Now it too will head to the small-quilts-to-be-quilted pile.

Okay, so there are a lot of little finishes in my future. What's next? Well, when I finish the binding on "Seasons" and "Hawksbill Honu," it'll be time to start on the next quilt to be quilted. Next in line is "Ruth's Legacy." Already, I've spent some time smoothing and ironing the back, and it's draped over Eliza awaiting the arrival of my quilting needle. I'm thinking I'll use a colorful variegated thread for this, but I haven't made any decisions about it yet.

Also, reaching the last Saturday in June, I'm informed that July's color  for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge will be "aqua." I'll want to make July's block next. These are the blocks I have for this quilt so far.

When that's finished, I'll be ready to return to my list of WIP's. First up will be to make five more blocks for the Stair Steps quilt, and that will give me a finished quilt top.

So there's plenty to keep me busy on the sewing front. I'm afraid my days of zero to-do's have come to an end. I need to do a little housework today, and I need to fill the bird feeders. Honestly, when it comes to granulated sugar, the hummingbirds are slurping us out of house and home. Lately, I'm buying a bag of sugar every time we go to the grocery store. Also, I haven't checked on things outside for a couple of days. The blueberries are getting very close to ripe, and we need to be paying attention to the cherries too. I'm hopeful we'll get to the cherries before the raccoons do.

Okay, so there's plenty to keep me busy. Slow-stitching on Le Jardin is next. Time to be on my way.

Picking Up the Pace

Good morning, my friends. Its been nice to indulge in the peace of some slow days over the past week. With Mike’s cataract surgeries, and my asthma attack of the previous week, it was good to have a breather. (Pun totally intended.) Yesterday morning, I started on a new embroidery piece. This is Block 8 of 9 for the Le Jardin project. Not much color so far, but it’s coming.

From there, I took a short break and filled the bird feeders. Then I returned to the same chair as before and went to work on my quilt binding. There was more progress than expected on this. I’ve managed to turn the first two corners. This won’t be finished today, but tomorrow isn’t out of the question.

The grocery list was made up while I ate some lunch, and I got in quick nap. When I woke up there was still plenty of time in the afternoon for  the Hawksbill Honu quilt. I’ve been looking forward to this. It was my second attempt at Sashiko. The first was this little quilt I made for one of the art quilt challenges.

This one, Hawksbill Honu, was made from a kit. All I needed to do was to sandwich it, and then get to work on the quilting. At 21 x 24 inches, it’s a small piece, and so the quilting didn’t take long.

While I was setting up my domestic machine for quilting, Smitty gave it a quick inspection.  Satisfied, he gave me his purrmission to begin.

So I didn’t want the quilting to be obvious on this. I love the contrast of the white Sashiko against the dark background, and I didn’t want the quilting to distract from the turtle design. On either side of the turtle, I quilted a strip of kelp.

My internal debate in thinking about how to quilt this was knowing that things on the ocean floor float upward. What would I do in the narrower spaces running vertically across the top and bottom? The other challenge is simply doing something that I am capable of quiting. Since I can’t draw worth beans, my designs have to be pretty simple. I’ve had good luck searching for quilting designs by Googling “straight line drawing of [fill in the blank].” If someone else will draw it for me, then I’m pretty good at copying. The starfish was pretty easy. Probably, I could have done that on my own. And then I filled in below with some bubbles. I used different sizes of buttons to make round circles for the bubbles.

Here, I searched for a straight-line drawing of a seahorse, and I found one I could do pretty easily. I first drew it on the fabric in a white chalk pencil (invaluable), and then I stitched over it. The white chalk brushes away pretty easily.

I stitched another strip of kelp up the right side of the turtle, and then some more bubbles over the top.

The borders gave me the same trouble as before. Everything needs to be vertical if I’m sticking with ocean scenes as my inspiration. There was plenty I could do in the vertical borders, but what about the narrow space at the top and bottom? In the end, I decided to let the fabric tell me what to do. I thought I might try to do a straight line drawing of a turtle. Since the fabric already has turtles on it, it made sense to just outline those for texture. I outlined some of the other elements too, and connected them with a loop.

Here’s a peek at the back. I love that fabric.

So…all finished. I squared it up.

Today I’ll give it a purple binding. (And since I’m already hand-sewing a quilt binding, there’s no rush to get to this one.)

Probably I could have sewn the binding on, but I was getting tired of sewing by then. Instead, I looked ahead at my whiteboard. Next in line was to finish this little quilt made while we were traveling in SoCal this past winter. I call this quilt “Tulip Time.” It’s going to make a cute little spring table topper. When I looked at it, I realized it’s ready for quilting too.

For this, I’ll just cut a back for it…maybe select something for a binding…and then set it aside for when the next small quilt comes up on my whiteboard for quilting. I found the pink below in my stash. It seems as good a choice as any. There’s probably something suitable for a binding too, but I haven’t really looked.

Okay, so instead, I’ll finish this little project off somehow. It’s another little quilt I made on our winter trip. I call this “Bunny Bait.” It’s just a quilt block, but I have in mind to fancy it up somehow and make it into a little wall hanging. I’m pretty sure I have a fabric that will make a good border…that is, if I didn’t use it all up at some point in time. If I can’t find anything I like, I might have to go shopping. Wouldn’t that be just awful?

Okay, so like I said…we’re picking up the pace today. We got off easy with our grocery shopping last week. There were only a couple of things we needed. This week, the list is monstrously long. We have one other errand to run as well, but we’ll get our beloved Egg McMuffins first. The rest of the day will go so much better after a sumptuous fast-food breakfast. 

I’m hoping to get some sewing done this afternoon. For sure, I want to round another corner on my quilt binding. Getting the Hawksbill Honu to hand-stitching stage would be nice too. 

All righty then. Off I go. I have miles to go before I sleep.