A Finish!

This morning I sat and finished hand-sewing the binding onto the Plain and Simple Amish Sampler quilt.  I am so happy with how this turned out.  I started it in January, 2012.  It was my very first NewFO!  And may I just say that this is what I love about the NewFO Challenge.  If I hadn't set out to start something new each month, I have no doubt that this quilt would still be on my to-do list.

And here it is!

We had to hold it horizontally to be able to hold it straight.  It's 85 inches wide x 103 inches long, and so we can't hold it high enough to get it off the floor.  Here's how it looks from the back.

The pattern suggested using a deep olive green for the back, but I prefer this royal blue.  The quilting was done by my long arm quilter, Erin Davis.  And next week, I'll be linking up to:

So with that done, I can move on to some other things.  I want to finish up the dog house for my Gardener's Journal quilt, and then move on to the last of the vintage miniature sewing machines.  But since I spent the better part of my waking hours last week sewing, I should probably do something less fun today.  I have a little bit of housework to do, but not much.  Then, I can go back to sewing.  Baking is sounding very tempting right now too.

Sue and I walked yesterday, and--miracle of miracles--we managed to find a window of opportunity to walk without getting rained on.  Next week is scheduled to be nice, and so I'm planning to get out in the yard and clean up the winter kill.  Here's our forecast for the week--with some highs reaching into the 70's!  Of course, it won't be as warm on our hill, but I'm not complaining.

If you want to see the dead come back to life, just show up in Portland when the words "sunny and pleasant" and "bright sunshine and pleasant" and just plain "pleasant" are associated with our weather forecast.  Sunshine:  it's a beautiful thing.

We're planning some work on the main floor of our house.  We're going to carpet our dining room and living room and have the hardwood floor in the kitchen refinished.  Monday I'm going to pick out some carpet, and I have worker bees all lined up to do the work.  The only thing I need to know now is how long it will take to get the carpet--oh yes, and picking a color would help too.

After that, I'm going to stop in and buy some annuals to plant in my terra cotta pots in the front of the house. My tomatoes are still trying to decide whether to live or die, and so I'm still up in the air about whether to use my own starts or purchase some healthier ones.  We looked at the starts at the last Farmer's Market, but they were no larger than the ones I had started myself.  Also, they are almost exclusively slicing tomatoes, and I want more sauce tomatoes.

So that's my agenda for the next week.  I'm planning to do some sewing, but maybe not as much as I did last week.  How about you?  Is your weather starting to play nice yet?