Some Sunshine

Good morning, my friends. How are y'all doing this morning? It rained for a good part of the day yesterday. By afternoon, the clouds cleared off, and there was blue sky and sunshine. It was nice because Mike wanted to go out for dinner. After being cooped up inside for the past two days trying not to drown, we were both approaching a serious case of cabin fever. Then, when I awakened this morning, rain was coming down in buckets again. Possibly it was the last gasp of the atmospheric river that passed through because as I'm writing this, the sky is blue and the sun is shining. Let's hope it lasts. Unless another storm blows through, this should be our weather for the remainder of the week. (Proofreading now...the sky has clouded over again. Sigh.)

There were a few things to take care of yesterday morning. I gave the Bowflex some attention and then did a little cleaning. Quilting had to wait until after lunch. When I'd spent my hour's limit at it, I took it off the machine for a look. It's a little hard to see the quilting in the image below.

You can see it a little better from this angle.

You can see it even better from the back. I'm guesstimating I'm about halfway finished with this grid. The borders will be quilted separately.

From there, it seemed like a good idea to ready my next slow-stitching project. The sheep will probably be finished in a day or two, and so I traced July's block for A Year in the Garden.

It'll be next when the sheep are finished.

With that done, I could turn my attention to Autumn's Harvest Pumpkin. First, I trimmed it to the size I wanted. This pattern was intended for a pillow, but mine is going to end up a wall-hanging. It could also be a little table topper.

You might recall I purchased the leaf fabric below with this project in mind. The fat quarter to the right will be a stop border. The one on the left will be the binding.

So, I gave it a narrow stop border.

And then a wider outer border. That brought it to 23 x 20 inches.

I'd pulled several fabrics for the back, but settled on this one. It was the smallest piece, and I figured I'd save the others for a different project.

When I opened the fabric I'd pulled for the binding, I found some binding strips cut for a different project. I added up the lengths and found I had just exactly what I needed for the pumpkin project. It's almost like it was meant to be. When I cut these strips, I must have known that future me would appreciate them.

Okay, and that brought me to the end of my sewing day. I'll get back to quilting It Takes a Village today, and then I'll sandwich and quilt Autumn's Harvest Pumpkin. I'm hoping I can get it to binding stage by day's end.

With the drenching rain paused for the evening, I checked in on the Firefighter dahlia. As expected, it was bent over, heavy with raindrops. 

I shook the water off and propped it up. It still looks pretty good. There are two more buds on the plant. We haven't yet had our first frost, and so I can hold off a while before I cut it back. It seems a shame not to give those buds a chance to bloom.

Heading back upstairs, I found these Andromeda shoots glistening with raindrops. This picture doesn't really do justice to what I saw. They were sparkling like diamonds.

Okay, so there's not much on today's agenda. I need to finish creating a menu for next week, and then I need to make up a shopping list. We'll do our grocery shopping tomorrow. It'll be a short list since we did some shopping on Friday. I want to get in a walk on the treadmill, and then it'll be all sewing all the time. I'm hoping to make some good progress by the end of the day.