Pawtrait of The Emperor

No, I'm not talking about Mike, although he would love it if I started walking around referring to him as The Emperor. As if. Anyway...no, the cat whose name really is The Emperor.

Before finishing off the binding, I added the "gleam" to his eyes, and then stitched the binding on. Here's how it looks from the back:

The Kaffe Fassett print was out for consideration as a binding, but then I decided it would make a better backing. As it turns out, I had some scraps of that turquoise binding, and so I chose that. Then I got to work hand-stitching it under the watchful eye of Himself.

This is a very impurrtant quilt for one of our good furriends. Don't muss up.

Okay, so remember what I said yesterday about going to pick up a wine shipment and then to the tulip festival? Well, never mind. It started raining, and then we figured out that the winery is closed on Monday. Instead, we went to the recycling depot, made a short trip to the grocery store, and then topped off our outing with lunch at Taco Bell. Yep, the good times never end here at the Three Cats Ranch. The weather is supposed to improve on Wednesday, and so we postponed our trip to the winery and the tulip festival until then.

When we got home, I got to work quilting the Mommy & Me quilt. As a reminder...

I started at the center with the appliques and did some pebbling in the elephant ears.

Then a basic meander in the rest of the elephant. The center of the fusible was cut from these to keep them soft, and so they need to be quilted down securely to keep them from floating above the quilt background.

Then I outlined the ears and the rest of the applique, including the balloon strings and the balloons.

Same for the baby elephant.

That's as far as I got before I needed to quit for the day. I'm pretty clear on how I want to do the 5-inch squares above and below the elephants and the areas above and below the rickrack. I'm still mulling over what to do behind the elephants. I'll probably do a sort of rectangular meander. It's a baby quilt, and so I don't want to quilt it too densely. It should be functional but still maintain some flexibility and softness.

The reason for our quick grocery trip was to pick up some lemons. (I'd used all of mine on the lemon meringue pie last week.) Recently, I saw this recipe for Vermontucky Lemonade, and I wanted to give it a try. Earlier in the afternoon, I made the lemonade, which is sweetened with maple syrup (the Vermont portion). The recipe said 1/4 to 1/2 cup of maple syrup. First, I added 1/4 cup, and it seemed a little tart to me. So I added another 2 tablespoons, and that was just about right. It would depend on your lemons. Then we added ice to our glasses and added a shot of bourbon (the Kentucky portion).

Mine had less bourbon in it because I'm not much of a bourbon drinker. Still...I liked it! It tastes like summer! Wishing we had some warmer weather to go along with it. We're definitely ready for summer.

So today is an egg pick-up day and then we need to do a serious grocery shop...not just for lemons. After that, back to the quilting. Hoping some inspiration for that background will come between now and then.