A Little Finish

Good morning, my friends. It was a hot day here yesterday, destined to get hotter as the week wears on. We're expecting cooler weather by next weekend. The heat has gone easy on us this summer, and so I suppose it's our turn. I have my gardening chores finished until later in the week...aside from watering the annuals, that is. Mike has set up drip irrigation in some of the flower pots, but there are a few I'm still watering with a hose and wand. Fortunately, it doesn't take a lot of time. I'll be able to stick to the coolness of the air-conditioned house.

There wasn't much to photograph in yesterday's garden. I harvested a few more vegetables. The replacement dahlia is doing well, and I was happy to see this perky little flower bud. 

It drooped some yesterday when the afternoon sun hit it. We're planning to move it into the shade for a few days. The others are doing just fine.

Back inside, I went to work finishing off the hand-sewing on the quilt binding After an hour or so, I'd turned all four corners.

And how could I go wrong with my trusty stitching cat by my side?

And there's the finished quilt!

Here's how it looks from the back.

So, I hung around for a bit, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. After a while, I dragged myself into the sewing room to get a start on the next block for When Quilter's Gather. Making the pattern for these is the worst part, which is why I was dragging my feet. It turned out to be pretty quick work. If you want to know what you're looking at here, you can read my blog post about the process right here.

And then I went to work sewing it together. It was getting late in the day by the time I had four sections completed, and so I stopped there.

Looking at the picture in the book, the section outlined in white is as far as I got.

In Ways with Zucchini, I tried a new recipe for Zucchini & Tomato Casserole. It isn't a looker, but it was pretty tasty. I'd make it again.

It's layered with panko, fontina and parmesan cheeses, sun-dried tomatoes, greenhouse tomatoes, and the requisite zucchini slices. It was easy enough to put together. I made just half the recipe and baked it in my toaster oven. We ate half, and I froze the remainder for our future travels. Although I planned to make a zucchini coffee cake yesterday, I decided to wait until today. That will be among my first stops on today's agenda.

When I'm able to make my way into the sewing room, I'll get a start on Tiny House #31...this one:

I'll spend an hour on that, and then get back to my other quilt block.

When I came upstairs, Sadie was stretched out to her full length in front of the stairs. When you have no tail, you don't get much length. She was sitting on Mike's lap, but then left when she got too warm.

Also on today's agenda...laundry. As we've discussed before, it goes hand-in-hand with sewing all day long. And since it's warm outside, the refrigerated basement sewing room is a good place to be.

I won all my word games again this morning. It's going to be a good day. I hope you have a good day planned for yourselves too.