Trio of Tushes

Good morning, my friends, and happy Saturday. It's going to be a busy couple of days here. I have some cooking to do. The kids are coming up for dinner tomorrow. On today's agenda is to make two salads. Tomorrow I'll do some baking. Mike is going to do some burnt ends. Here's a picture of some he made earlier in the year.

We liked them so much the first time we made them, we really wanted to share them with the kids. Erik loves barbecue, and he's an excellent barbecue chef in his own right. I expect I'll have some time for sewing in all of that. 

We were out of the house early (for us) yesterday morning. We had three stops. Mike needed something from the hardware store. After that we got our groceries, and then made one more stop at the liquor store. I needed some brandy for one of my recipes, and we were fresh out of inexpensive, but drinkable brandy. It was fairly late in the day by the time I got into the sewing room. 

My first stop was to take a second look at the bag I showed you yesterday. I wasn't happy with the way the orange liner of the bag blended into the towel she's sitting on. I wanted to change it.

It's possible to remove fused pieces without doing harm. Generally, if I'm changing my mind about something I do it right in the moment, rather than letting it sit overnight. When I tried to pull up these two pieces, they frayed and pulled apart. When I removed them from the quilt, they left behind fusible residue. Usually, that comes off easily too. Yesterday's...not so much. 

I tried scraping it off with my finger nail, and I tried picking it off with my fingers. Then, I tried scratching it off with the back-end of my tweezers. No dice. So, then I dabbed it with a Q-tip dipped in lighter fluid, and still, it wanted to stay where it was. I was ready to give up when I thought to try pressing it with some freezer paper. And wow...that really did the trick. I put the shiny side against the fabric, and then ironed over it. 

It took that fusible off like nobody's business, and it looked as if it had never been there. So, I learned something new.

And then, I went to work making another bag with a different liner. I stuck with the same teal I'd used on the hat band and the edge of the towel. I like this better.

She still needed her flip-flops, and I added the drink sitting on the wall between her and her friend.

From there, I went to work on the right-most of the ladies...this one:

She has a different larger bag, and she also has a drink to her right. Now the right side of the piece is finished. Here are my three ladies.

I expect I'll be able to finish at least one more of the ladies today. If I'm lucky, I can finish the fifth one too.

So while we sat watching the news last night, a bobcat strolled through our field. We hadn't seen him all year. I wasn't quick enough to capture him with my camera, but there are a couple of pictures I took back in 2017. 

Isn't he a handsome fellow? Of course, he's not as handsome as Smitty, but then...Smitty. Enough said.

Here's another picture taken as he strolled away.

Sadie saw him too. This is a kitty's version of "Holy Sh*t! What did I just see?"

Also, be sure to check out our tree in its fall colors in the upper right of the image above.

Okay, so I've already said it's going to be a kitchen day. With so much to do yesterday morning, I didn't get any slow-stitching done yesterday. I'll spend a little more time with that today before getting on with my kitchen duties. I'm also hoping to get in a walk on the treadmill. As always, there's much to do. Time to get to it. Have a good day, Everybody!