Some Progress

Good morning, my friends. I'd say it's a good morning here, except that it's a grocery shopping day. That's never good. Oh well. I do like the food, so there's that. Yesterday was a day of rest. I had a nice breakfast with Sue, and then came home and filled the bird feeders. I've been checking on the newly-planted carrot seed tape to make sure it stays covered. Everything looked good there. Mike and I briefly discussed the pattern of the automatic sprinklers. It's been very windy, and so the wind is interfering with our ability to get full coverage from them. Fortunately, the warm weather has moved in, and I believe we'll be relatively wind-free for the next day or two. And all of that to say that my time in the garden was limited yesterday. I was ready to do some in-the-house things.

When I went downstairs from writing yesterday's post, I found the kitties flaked out in the sunshine working on their tans.

They've been warned about the dangers of melanomeow, but I have not been able to convince them to wear sunscreen. They're thinking about our boating trip planned for later this summer, and they want to have a good tan before they're seen in public in their swimsuits. I know the feeling. (My apologies to my Facebook friends who are repeatedly subjected to my bad jokes.)

I'd missed my slow-stitching when I needed to leave for breakfast, and so I spent some time on that when I got home. The first stitches were taken on the new Summer Sun piece.

While I was stitching, I remembered it was time to switch out my spring decor for my Flag Day/Fourth of July decor. I hung this "Liberty Sampler" on the short wall between the kitchen and dining room. This is a pattern from Kathy Schmitz. I did it a while back because I wanted to do something with some different embroidery stitches.

On the breakfast bar, this table topper from Crabapple Hill Studios. This is the "Sweet Land of Liberty" pattern. It's intended to be a pillow pattern. I just added some extra borders to turn it into a table topper.

Finally, this runner on the dining room table. This is another pattern from Crabapple Hill called "In the Good Old Summertime."

And then, I was ready for some sewing. I set my one-hour timer and prepared to start on Section "G" for the Tiny House. About then, Sadie showed up.

Are you still papurr-piecing? Are we EVER going to do something else?

She briefly considered her options.

I'll just lie over here, look away, and purrtend you don't need my help.

With no kitty help, I didn't get very far. Section "G" there in the middle seemed to take forever. I was able to finish Section "H" as well, but that was as far as I got with it yesterday. I'd like to finish it off today, and so I'll probably just bite the bullet until it's done.

When my hour was up, I set up the machine for free motion quilting and went to work on the Sewing Day quilt. This is a small quilt and so it didn't take long. I did a little meander in the center panel.

I stitched around the edges of the button jars, both for functionality and for texture.

And then I did a little half-heart motif in the border. I like it the way it is, but it would be possible to do the motif in the opposite direction to finish the hearts.

It was getting close to dinner time by then, and so I squared it up for its binding and left it there for the day. My first stop today will be to machine sew the binding, and then it will be ready for hand-stitching.

I fell in love with this pattern when I saw it. Sometimes they go into the stack with the other PINS (Projects I Never Started), but I shoved everything else aside to stitch this first. I'll hang it in my sewing room somewhere when it's finished.

Okay, so that brings me to today's agenda. Grocery shopping is at the top of the list. I doubt I'll want to do much else after that. If I'm feeling terribly energetic ("terribly" being the operative word in that sentence), I might get out and do some weeding. Probably that will wait for tomorrow. Right now...slow-stitching. It's important to get the day off to a good start on grocery shopping days.