A Lazy Day and a Finish

Good morning, my friends! I hope you enjoyed our one week of summer because we're back to the gray and gloom today. Last night, rain started to fall. I expect we'll get rain off and on over the next couple of days before it returns to a most-of-the-time thing on Thursday. The warm weather won't return until weekend after next. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. I'm still holding off spreading my wildflower seed. If I throw it out when there's no rain, the birds will eat it before it can germinate. If I throw it out when there's no sun...same thing. As you can see, this is tricky business. To quote the wicked witch, these things must be handled delicately.

Thanks to all of you who left such kind and thoughtful comments about my "Full Circle" quilt in yesterday's post. I appreciate your wading through all that brat nostalgia. Of course, my post was written days ahead, and so I had a day off from blogging yesterday. That means we're catching up from Sunday today. I surprised myself by finishing up the Technicolor quilt. I could have used any color of thread, but I chose this variegated yellow for my top thread.

Since I had three spools of the variegated yellow below (and two wound bobbins), it seemed that choosing anything else might actually be a criminal act. Taking no chances, I used it.

Smitty was my not-helper cat while I worked on it.

It took a couple of hours to quilt. It's a small quilt at 38 x 44 inches. When it was finished, I laid it out next to the living room window where the lighting is pretty good.

It's nothing fancy...a diagonal grid in the middle and some loopy stuff in the borders.

Flipping it over, it looked like this.

It was around 4:00 p.m. Sunday by then. I figured I was finished for the day. But then I took it downstairs and trimmed the batting even with the top of the quilt and trimmed the backing to one-inch all the way around. And I figured if I had it that far, I might as well fold and press the binding. And then I figured I might as well pin it. It still only 4:45, so what the heck? Then I figured I might as well sew it down. Using a zigzag stitch, I finished the binding, and I had myself a finished quilt.

Here's how it looks from the back:

Okay. So now it's packaged up for mailing. I think we might do that today. 

We had some errands to run yesterday. When we got home, I took a little walk around the yard. The Andromeda is developing it's red leaves now. 

The whiskey barrel tulips are blooming near the front door.

This next one shares its whiskey barrel with the poppies near the greenhouse.

The tomatoes have grown a couple of inches already. I expect I'll be repotting them next week. The lunaria on the right of the image below has not done anything yet. I'm kind of surprised.

The blueberries are developing flowers. Despite the cold weather this past winter, these seem to be thriving.

The cherry trees are in full bloom now. This is the Black Tartarian.

These are from the Bing.

I noticed how the Black Tartarian blossoms (on the left in the image below) grow in fairly straight lines along the tree branches, while the Bing blossoms (on the right) grow in clusters. It wasn't very warm yesterday, and so there was no insect activity that we could see. I'm still hopeful we'll get some cherries this year.

Continuing on, the stargazer lily popped its head above ground.

To its left, I noticed some signs of life on the echinacea. This is the last thing I worried over, and so it seems everything survived the winter weather.

One of the peonies has several buds now.

The chives are getting ready to bloom. I'm happy to see the chives making a comeback after being inundated by the sage plant the year before. I might have enough for sage blossom vinegar this year.

Okay, so today is going to have to be a grocery shopping day. I don't even have a list made up yet, and so I'll have to do that first. We're out of coffee and ice cream, and I don't know how we can possibly survive without either. You can see that these are desperate times. 

On the sewing front, I'm between projects now. There's another Tiny House to build, and that will be my first priority. The color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge has been announced: orange. That means I'll be making another block for my Heritage quilt too. Here are the blocks I have for that quilt so far.

The "Spring has Sprung" embroidery piece is nearly finished, and so making up the blocks for my next slow-stitching project is also a high priority. All of that can be accomplished as a break from my next quilting project. And, finishing up, it's time to choose a project for May's

 My goal for May is to quilt and bind the Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs quilt. 

It's my oldest UFO, started in 2019. It will be good to get it finished. It has spent the past several weeks relaxing over Eliza. I think they're fully acquainted now, so quilting can commence.

There's plenty to keep me busy today, and so I'll just get to it. Welcome to May, my friends! Summer will be here before we know it.