Over the Hump

It's rare for me to lose my sewing mo-jo, and sometimes I'm not sure what's holding me back. Recently, it was the top-stitching for the Garden Sunshine blocks. They had some applique with lots of curves, nooks, and crannies, and I wasn't feeling like doing all that top-stitching. But it's finished now, and so I'm back, Baby! After I've made the two June blocks for the Countdown to Christmas sew-along, I'll be ready to get on with Clementine's Pawtrait.

As for the Garden Sunshine blocks, I was kind of stuck on the wings for the bees. When I tried to make wings from Angelina fibers the day before, I had the iron too hot and melted them. Actually, I was trying to fuse them to some Heat 'n Bond, and a too-hot iron ruined them. So, I gave it some thought over night and then remembered how I'd done it once before. If you've been following for a very long time, then you might remember when I made some dragonfly wings for the Psycatdellic quilt.

In this case, I used a fusing medium to fuse them to the quilt. But first, one must make a "fabric sheet" from the Angelina fibers. The look like this when you take them from the package...a little like angel hair.

You can sort of flatten them out and then hit them with a hot iron to make a shimmery flat piece.

And then, you can treat them just like any fabric, albeit a heavily starched fabric. It's stiff like a thin piece of cardboard. In my ruminations yesterday, I found a leftover piece from this old project.

So I made a template for the bees' wings and then cut out two sets of wings.

The problem with fusing them with Heat 'n Bond (or any other product) is that it takes the shimmer out of the fibers, and so for this project, I decided to try just sticking the wings with a dab of fabric glue.

Then I used this pearlescent metallic thread to zig zag the edges down.

And that worked better than I thought it would.

It was tempting to redo the dragonfly wings, but I left them in the green I'd already fused down, and then used a buttonhole stitch to top-stitch the rest of the applique. Here are the June blocks for the Garden Sunshine quilt.

While I was at the grocery store yesterday, I picked up some blueberries. I had a yen to bake something, and these Blueberry Crumb Bars from Smitten Kitchen caught my eye.

I only made half the recipe and baked it in an 8 x 8 baking dish. It was easy enough to use half the ingredients. For the half egg, I used just the egg white. Mike said he wished he could give it more than five stars. We had it with some vanilla ice cream. Really yummy, and very easy to make. It's like blueberry jam between two layers of streusel.

This morning, I went out early to take some pictures of the blooming daylilies. Now I know why they're called "day" lilies. Like so many flowers, they close up in cooler temperatures, and so I'll have to go out again later and get them when they're opened. For now, you can see how they look in the early morning.

The plants are loaded with flowers.

Also, there are at least three flowers on the calla lily, and this one is starting to show its color. I'm kind of excited about these since I forgot we even planted them.

Also, the echinacea are getting very close to putting on a show. I have three plants from the original six I planted, and each is a different color. This one is a more iridescent purple.

This one is more yellow.

The third one is pink, but its flowers are still in tight buds.

Also, the cherry tomatoes are coming along. This is the Sunsweet variety, and they're like candy when they're ripe.

Finally, I wanted to tell you about a product I purchased recently for when I'm doing hand embroidery. This is a USB Rechargeable Neck Book Light. 

Usually, I wear a head lamp when I'm going hand embroidery. In the morning, when I still have a bedhead, I don't mind having it strapped to my head. But when I'm, say, waiting in an airport, I don't necessarily want to spread embroidery geekdom throughout the airport by strapping it on and flashing everyone who glances in my direction...and besides, I don't necessarily want to give myself a hat head either. 

So I decided to give this a try, and it works pretty well. You put it around your neck and you can bend the light to where you want it. Each end has a light with an individual switch, so you can have both lights turned on, or just one. I wish the arms were a little longer, which would allow me to get the light farther away from my hands. As it is, it casts a shadow over my work a little bit, but the second light gives me the capacity to make adjustments and get the light where I want it. Anyway...I give the product four stars out of five. It probably makes a great book light, even if you're not interested in it for hand sewing.

Mike and I are going on a daytime date to the Backyard Bird Shop today. We've been wanting to put up a bird house and hopefully attract the swallows back to our yard. As it is the starlings bully them into building their nests elsewhere. I paid a visit to the bird shop a couple of weeks ago and was able to identify our particular birds as Violet-Green Swallows. We have a 20% off coupon to use during the month of June, and the days are waning. On the way home, we'll have lunch somewhere. Seems like a good way to spend our Saturday.