Happy Fifth!

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Don't you think we should celebrate the Fourth of July every day of the year? I suppose it could get confusing, but we'd get used to it after a while I think. 

We had such a lovely day yesterday. It was a little more muggy than we're used to in Portland, but it wasn't too hot. Here are a few reminders of the day.

Erik and Mae got there around 1:45 and established the "beach head". The pop-up awning is a life saver on these day-long excursions to the Willamette River. Mike and I arrived around 3:15. We took the camper this year, and we felt as if we were in the lap of luxury with our own private port-a-potty...not to mention a bed for napping, and ready access to any tools we forgot to bring along otherwise.

You can see that the Stanbro family was stressed out...yep. Hard to relax on these beautiful summer days.

After a while Mae and I took a little walk down the river to get a better look at the new streetcar/light rail/pedestrian bridge being constructed over the Willamette. Pretty snazzy, huh?

I'm going to estimate those suspension cables are about 10-12 inches in diameter.

When we got back, Erik and I took a walk in the other direction trying to find a brewery that could refill his beer growler. There were some two dozen breweries right in the local areas. Portland is pretty proud of its growing beer brewing industry.

Ultimately, we were unsuccessful in getting a refill, but it was a nice walk nonetheless. I got my exercise for the day, for sure.

When we got back, Erik went to work grilling the Korean-style ribs. Mae got them marinating four days previous, and they were so tender and flavorful. I'm going to venture a guess and say they might have been the best-tasting ribs I've ever eaten.

Yum.

Around dusk the barge arrived with its fireworks display all ready to go. All we needed was darkness.

Best seats in the house. We had our lounge chairs with us and so we all tipped back and waited for the show to begin.

I love watching the Portland skyline light up as darkness falls.

At around 10:00 p.m., it all started. Maybe you're tired of fireworks, but here's a little taste of our show. We all agreed it was the best fireworks display we've seen in about ten years of going to the river to watch.

As always, you handheld people will have to go to a regular computer to see it...or not...your choice. Not expecting to win any academy awards with this documentary, so no biggy.

Then this morning I finished hand-sewing the binding to my Blooming Sunflower. All done now. I'm probably going to add a label to this, however. I'm thinking I might like to enter this one in the Stitches in Bloom show next January and then the 2015 Oregon State Fair. It's too early to say, but I'm all about the quilt shows now...the little ones, at least.

This is the fabric I used for the binding. The metallic stripes give it a little bit of flash. Originally, I used this fabric for the jar lids on a bug jar quilt I made a long time ago. In fact, all of the fabrics in this quilt came from my stash.

Here's how it looks from the back.

I bumped up the contrast in the image below so that you could see the stitching a little better. Usually, the stitching doesn't show much on the back of my quilts, but this one looks pretty good.

Tomorrow I'll link up to:

So today Mike and I are going to run some errands. I want to pick up some boards so that I can sandwich "When Angels Walk" a la the Sharon Schamber method. It'll break my rule about how large a quilt I'm willing to sandwich and quilt myself, but I'm willing to give it a try. Her method will allow me to try the larger size. Since I'm only planning straight-line quilting, my sewing machine should handle the size just fine. Getting it sandwiched is the challenge this time around.

And that's about it from me. Carry on with your summer. How was your Fourth?