Cool Cats

Good morning, my friends. It was a mostly sewing day yesterday. It was too hot to be outside, although I did get out early to groom the poppies growing in whiskey barrels. I didn't take any pictures. There's really not much to see. My slow stitching had to wait since I wanted to get out before it got too hot. 

When I got to it, I was able to finish off the first of the two embroidered sections for Block 6 of the Raggedy & Friends project.

I'll get started on the second one this morning.

Now I want to show you our cleverly cool cats. We bought this shorter kitty pole earlier this year. Smitty seemed to be having trouble jumping up to the highest level of the pole he usually uses. (He is 13 years old, and he's beginning to show his age.) So, we got him this “geriatric” pole. By the way, he's been better since we've been back from Alaska. Possibly, the confined space of the camper forced him to give whatever was ailing him a rest. In any case, the kitties have figured out if they lie on this pole, the cool air blows on them from the register you see in the floor there in the image below.

Sadie has figured out that if the top level is good, the lower level is even better.

Next up on my sewing agenda was to finish quilting the blocks for the Stitching Wisdom quilt. There was one embroidered block left.

And the two pieced and embroidered corner blocks.

Now I'm ready to start on the sashing and cornerstones. I left it needle down at one of the middle horizontal sashings. I'm still mulling over what to do there. I'll just have to wait and see what my hands decide on. I don't know if I'll finish them all today. I might limit myself to the horizontal sashings and then do the vertical ones tomorrow. It depends on how well my wrists hold up.

From there, I was ready to tackle June's orange Kitten in a Cup. June's kitten is Siamese. I kind of wish there was more contrast between the light parts of the kitten and the background, but it is what it is. I'm not changing it.

Now I'm caught up on these until September's color is announced. Here are the eight blocks I have for this quilt so far.

So now I have two projects I can't continue until something is delivered. I'm still awaiting the floss for my Sashiko piece, which is taking a frustratingly long time to arrive. I'm told it will be here no later than Thursday. That will be three full weeks since I ordered it. If it doesn't arrive by then, I'm going to demand a refund.

Also, I'm not able to finish off the Cats in Pajamas until I get a little more fabric to finish the borders. And so that brings me to the next section of my white board: Small Quilts to Quilt. "Small quilts" are quilts with no dimension larger than 60 inches. Smaller quilts can be sandwiched in my sewing room on my work table (which is a ping pong table). Usually they are small wall quilts that can be quilted on my domestic machine. The only quilt on the list for now is the Sweet Dreams quilt.

This is the Sweet Dreams quilt. It's a baby quilt for a baby due to be born next month. And if you remember when I made this, it's for a family of five...now six. I added a fourth baby bear to the design. There are already three boys in this family, and I'm sure they were hoping for a girl. As it turns out, they're expecting another boy. It's going to be an energetic household.

It's a small quilt, but larger than I want to do on my domestic machine. I'll first have to finish the Stitching Wisdom quilt before I can start on this one. I'll still get it sandwiched and ready to go. That won't take long, and so I'll want something else to work on. It makes sense to me to start sewing together the blocks for the one other quilt listed in the Quilt Tops to Finish section. 

So I'll probably do that next. These are the blocks. They'll be pretty straight forward to sew together. There are no borders for this quilt.

Okay so I'm writing fast this morning. We're taking the truck in to have the air conditioning repaired. Mike has the part it needs in hand, but someone else is going to do the work. Mike does almost all repairs on everything we own, but sometimes it requires an expensive tool. Where automobiles are concerned, sometimes it makes sense to let the guys who have a lift do the work, and so he'll let someone else do this job.

And with that...gotta go. Have a good week, Everybody. Cooler days are coming.