Turning Trash to Treasure

It was a busy day yesterday. I was up early and on the move all day. My first stop was for slow-stitching. There isn't always time for slow-stitching in the morning, but it's a rare morning that I don't do at least a little bit. I've been working away at hand-quilting Mulligan Stew. As of yesterday morning, I made a commitment to myself to keep working on it a little at a time until it's finished. For slow-stitching dessert, I'll work simultaneously on an embroidery project. For the time being, I'm continuing with the "Lord Bless You" stitchery, which is a pay-it-forward gift for a friend. Since she doesn't read my blog, I can show you my progress.

That section was just about as far as I could take it, and so I've moved the hoop down, and I'll continue on. I expect this will take at least another several days to finish. I've backed this piece with batting, and I'm stitching right through. It won't require much quilting since the embroidery will hold the batting in place. I'll probably still back it with a fusible stabilizer since my backing fabric is light, and I don't want those messy threads showing through.

The birds were starving outside, and so I went out to fill the feeders. Along the way, I took pictures of every blooming thing. This tulip is growing in the whiskey barrel near the front door. The deer don't bother it, probably because it's too close to the house.

The daffodils are still blooming away. I've shown you the yellow ones. Here are some of the white ones.

I have some with white centers too.

These are our flowering plum trees. When we planted these along the driveway many years ago, we started with thirteen trees. They died one by one. At first, we replaced them, but it was a rather expensive proposition, and so we stopped when they kept dying. We ended up with about half the trees still living, and they are fairly evenly spaced. It makes a pretty "welcome home" when we drive up and find them in bloom.

One thing we noticed right away when we returned from our trip was the golden chain tree had blown over at some point during the winter. Yesterday Matthew and Mike staked it up. We're hoping it will survive. It has buds on it, and so it looks promising.

This is the third golden chain tree we've planted. They seem to be doing fine, and then something happens. I'm really hoping this third one will prove to be the charm. On the other hand, there's another way that little idiom goes...three strikes and you're out.

The Andromeda is blooming now. It should start sprouting red foliage fairly soon.

The red flowering currant has already made an appearance on the blog, but I love it so much, I'm showing it again.

The cherry blossoms are beginning to open. This is the bing cherry tree.

The black tartarian is still in tight buds. With the warmth and sunshine, I expect it's flowers will be opening soon too.

Back in the sewing room, the kitties helped with this demonstration of the law of diminishing returns. (Showing off the things I learned as a student of economics during the 14th Century.)

There was just a little bit left to have all the half square triangles sewn together.

From there, I was ready to start adding borders. Sadie is interested in choosing a color for her next magazine photo shoot.

Do you think this color shows off my beautiful furs well enough?

Here...let me show you my alluring pose. What do you think?

She helped hold the fabric in place so that I could cut my borders nice and straight. Then I added the stop border. I could have gone with either aqua or red, but I like the aqua.

Then, I added the final border, and this quilt top was finished. It ended up 45 x 58 inches...a good lap quilt size. Someone mentioned in a Facebook group that she calls these quilts "trash can quilts" since they are made up from things most people throw in the trash. It gave me a name for it. I'm calling this "Trashy Triangles."

Here's a close-up of that border fabric. The polka dots disappear in the image above, but I wanted you to see how it looks in person.

Surprisingly, it's a Halloween fabric. Check out this selvage:

The half square triangles in the quilt all were generated from the making of Paintbox Pizzazz, one of my projects for the 2019 Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

When the borders were on, I'd come to the end of my sewing day. Sadie was sleeping in the "cubby" section of her scratching post next to the fireplace. There is a toy mouse hanging in that section. She kills it until she gets tired, and then she goes to sleep. When she wakes up, she commences killing it some more. Things can never be too dead, you know.

Upstairs, my sourdough starters were bubbling away. I'd fed them first thing in the morning and decided I'd work with whichever one was the most lively. It was the whole wheat starter this time around.

Just before we headed up to bed, I mixed up the bread dough for this Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin Bread. I've made this bread once before, and I know the proofing process takes forever. It made sense to start it and let it sit overnight.

When I got up this morning, it looked exactly as you see it here. It was disappointing, but not surprising. Today I'll fold the dough a few times. You can read about that the how-to's and the reasoning behind this process at the link I've given you. I'm hoping it will come to life and I'll be able to bake it before day's end, but it might take longer. Patience is a virtue here. And since it's taking so long, I'm also going to use the white starter to try a loaf-pan sourdough sandwich bread. It'll be a new recipe to me, and so I will, of course, report back on how it goes.

There is some housework to do this morning, and I need to go out for a couple of little things I forgot at the grocery store...mainly, cilantro, since I picked up parsley instead. I know the difference, and so it was exasperating when I got it home and realized what I'd done.

As for sewing, I'm making another trash quilt, and I have it all laid out to be sewn together. As you see it here, it's about 20 inches by 26 inches. I have some ideas about how to set it and add some borders to turn it into a larger quilt. I'll call this one "Trashed to the Nines."

Hopefully, I can get it finished this weekend since I want to start quilting the Pansy Mosaic on Monday. What are you working on today?