Pieceful Sewing

Good morning, my friends. It was a busy morning yesterday. I didn't get as much sewing done as I'd hoped, but I did get in a walk on the treadmill. Yay me! Today is a grocery shopping day, but I'm still hoping to get in a Bowflex workout. If I can keep it up for a couple of weeks, I think I'll successfully have incorporated more movement into my morning routine. I'm hoping the weather will cool off, and I can get in some walks outside.

The annuals needed watering yesterday, and so I took a walk around to check out the flowers. This is the poppy's last gasp. Both plants were completely bloomed out and the flowers gone to seed, when this one produced one last bud. It opened yesterday.

The daylilies are still going strong. They're so pretty in the morning sunshine.

To the left of the daylilies, I noticed the first petals forming on the echinacea. This might bloom today. The bees love it.

We're seeing more flowers from the variegated hydrangea.

Sadly, the hot sun is burning its petals.

I walked along the fence line of the bee garden to see if anything new had popped up. It's mostly evening primrose right now, but I love these blooming grasses. The blooming grasses are my worst hay fever nemeses. When I got within six feet of the fence, my nose started to twitch.

We're keeping a close eye on the cherries. They should turn dark purple when they're ripe. They're getting close, and their color deepens each day. I'm glad they held off a little bit. Today is supposed to be the last day of our heat wave, although it will still be plenty warm tomorrow. In any case, we didn't want to be out picking them in the heat.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that our daphne did not survive the winter. We replaced it, but the poor thing has been wilting in the heat. It always perks up by morning, but we worry it will be done-in with the sun beating down on it. Mike fashioned a little shelter for it with a loosely woven black tarp. He cut the lowest ring off a tomato cage and then used the wires from that to make "tent stakes." It still wilted in the sunshine yesterday, but we're hoping the shelter will still give it some respite from the heat.

Back inside, I was ready to start sewing together pieced blocks for the Almost Amish quilt. I had lots of kitty help.

Smitty helped by reading the instructions to me.

Sadie controlled the finished blocks.

With their help, I made a nine-patch. Good old nine-patch. It was the first quilt block I learned to make.

Then an Anvil block.

Then a Churn Dash.

And then, a Diamond Star. This one nearly broke my brain trying to get all those pieces pointing in the right direction.

Then I laid out the first two rows. These aren't sewn together, and I might decide to rearrange them. But this is what I have so far. I'm thinking this should be called an "Amish Sampler."

Before sitting down to write this post, I did my morning slow-stitching. I had just a little bit left to stitch on July's Joy in the Ordinarily block.

Today I'll add some borders to this, and it will be finished. I'm still working on the names and places for two more Shop Hop blocks. Those shouldn't take long, and then I'll be ready to get back to stitching two more blocks for The Story of My Day. These are the blocks I have for that quilt so far.

I'll be making blocks 17 and 18 out of 25. There should be time to trace the designs today.

Okay, so it's time to get on with my day. We'll have breakfast, and then there's plenty of time for a Bowflex workout before we need to go. It's been months since I did anything on the Bowflex. I hope I can still remember the exercises. If not...there's always the manual. Pictures will remind me what I'm supposed to be doing.

We're keeping cool here. I hope y'all are keeping cool and dry wherever you happen to be. My 14th Blogiversary celebration giveaway will be announced in a few days. I'll say more about that on Saturday