Binding Cats

When I finished sewing yesterday, I had taken the Love Me, Love My Cat quilt to having all the blocks, the inner border, and one of the sashings quilted.

For the stars, I decided to use the design Leah Day calls Sea Oat Flower.

(image credit)

I did mine a little differently than she did hers, however.  Where she made little loops for the leaves, I made hearts.  That made my design a little more crowded than hers, and so for the shorter tendrils on the flower, I only made hearts at the ends.  It's nearly impossible to see the quilting on this quilt because the fabrics are so busy.  (This isn't a bad thing.)  I'm going to do my best to show you, but if you can't see it, don't be surprised.

Here it is a little closer in and with the contrast bumped way up.  Not much better, but I tried.

Then for the inner border and the sashings, I used one of the decorative stitches on my Bernina 750.  This is stitch #698.  I lengthened it to 31.5 (not sure what that measurement refers to), and the stitch width is set at 9.

This morning, I decided to devote all of my energy to finishing up the quilting and binding.  I finished stitching the sashings and then did a sort of vine with a heart-shaped leaf in the outer border.  And here it is!  All finished, except for hand-sewing the binding.  It's a lap-sized quilt, and so that shouldn't take me very long.

I'm so happy to have this all finished.  Here are images of the individual embroidered blocks.  These were such fun to work on.

Since I started this last Monday, and I've worked on it every day since, I'm very glad to be moving on to something new now.  Tomorrow I'll start my June NewFO project, which is the Forest Giant pattern that appeared in the October, 2006, issue of Quilter's World magazine.

The June NewFO Linky party goes live one week from Sunday.  Are you ready?

Also yesterday, I met up with a certified arborist who took a look at one of our prettiest and tallest trees.  The technician from the business we laughingly call our "tree and shrub service" correctly diagnosed the problem.  The question I had was what to do about it, and our "tree and shrub service" had nothing to say about that.  

Further, the "service" they have been providing didn't prevent this blight from decimating the new growth on our tree.  It's been sickening watching all of its new growth wither and die.

So this certified arborist I met with yesterday made some recommendations, and also noted that the tree does have some unaffected new growth, which I've pointed out in the image below.

It seems all is not lost.  Yesterday he drilled all around the trunk of the tree and gave it an injection.  Hopefully, that will get rid of the disease.  Then he sprayed it, hoping that would save the new growth that hasn't been affected yet.  It's almost too late to do anything about it this year.  

Also we walked around and looked at our other trees, including one of our cherry trees that isn't looking good at all.  He stood back from the tree and told me what was wrong with it, and recommended a similar treatment for it and our other cherry tree, which is likely to catch the same disease.  I was very impressed with his knowledge, and when I discovered that he could provide all our tree and shrub service, I promptly hired him and fired the other company.  It might seem as if I acted in haste, but I figured he couldn't do any worse than the service we currently have.  So there.  I'm feeling better now.  I haven't been happy with the service we've had for quite a while, and so I'm happy to have found this guy.  I feel confident he'll do a better job for our trees and shrubs.

Today I'm biting the bullet and going for the physical therapy on my right knee that was recommended by my orthopedist back in March.  I absolutely hate physical therapy, and haven't found it to be particularly helpful in the past. Nevertheless, nothing I've tried is helping either, so I guess I'll give it another try.  I'm hoping I can get a strengthening program going that will improve my knee so that I can walk without limping and get up and down the stairs in our house easier.  Getting up the stairs is less of a problem than getting down, and sometimes the knee gives out on me, which makes me something of a fall risk.  Yeesh.  I love the physical deterioration that has come with growing older.  The word "love" in that sentence really means that I don't love it, in case you were wondering.  I'm skeptical about the efficacy of physical therapy, but I'm willing to give it one more try.

At least my quilt is finished.  If nothing else goes well, it's been a great way to start the day.