Something New

Good morning, my friends. Before I say another word, please join me in wishing this handsome hunka mancat a very happy 14th birthday.

My, oh my. How time flies. It seems only yesterday we brought home this little squirt.

He shows his age a little more now. Just like the rest of us, he has good and bad days. (Read that: "fast and slow days.") He's at an age where we know we won't have him for very much longer. Our first cat, Benjamin, lived to be 16. We also had a tortie named Krissy, and she lived to be 19. He's doing fine in his old age so far, but we remind ourselves daily to love him up while we still can.

It was a good day of sewing yesterday after taking a day or two off during the week. Of course, every morning starts with some slow stitching. This is Tiny Treasures #45. It has stem stitch, straight stitch, satin stitch, and lazy daisy.

There are three more days of these (including today), and so I decided to trace out Block 5 for "Home is Where My Flock Is."

Probably I'll get started on it by Tuesday morning.

I was in the mood to bake something, and so I baked us some Chocolate-Chunk Oatmeal Cookies with Pecans and Dried Cherries. I've linked to the original recipe there, but I've scaled it down to make it a "for two" version. Actually, what you see here are cookies for four. (They're big cookies.)

Usually when I bake these, I'm only baking two. Since I can fit four in my toaster oven, I decided to bake them for two plus two, and I'll freeze the extras for another day.

Okay, and then I got back to my quilting. I've been dragging my feet about this a little bit. Although I like my "Line Tamer" ruler for quilting straight lines, it's still difficult to hold onto the ruler while free motion quilting. I'd stitched a few inches on the first line when I remember...duh...that I had these square feet purchased some time ago. 

My machine is a Babylock Tiara II, but it is identical to the HandiQuilter Sweet 16 machine. Anything that will work on the HandiQuilter Sweet 16 will also work on my machine. I bought the feet in preparation for quilting this Strips & Stripes quilt back in 2023. It worked great for that.

So, I had to remind myself how to attach this foot to my machine...

And I especially like how I can snuggle it up to those corner seams so that I can quilt a nice square corner.

And that was a whole lot easier than trying to hold onto the ruler.

When I started on these borders, I was thinking there were ten bordered blocks. As it turns out, there are 12. And so I decided to break them up into groups of four. I did four yesterday. I'll do another four today and another four tomorrow. After that, it will be ready for binding. Here's a little peek at the back.

There was plenty of time left in the day to start on the next "Gumballs" quilt. As I've mentioned, I enjoyed doing this red version so much that I'm going to make another one in a different colorway.

This new one will be done in blues, greens, and aquas. So, I pulled out all my scrap bins, and went to work on the cutting for the first row of five blocks. Also, I didn't want to refer to them as the "Red Gumballs" and the "Green Gumballs." So, I started thinking of what else looks like gumballs. I know! Jawbreakers! So, these are the scraps I'll be using in my new "Jawbreakers" project.

Smitty read the cutting dimensions to me.

And then he helped me count them out as I cut.

It took what remained of my sewing day, but the cutting is finished now. I can start sewing these together today.

There was some time to get outside to see how the garden is growing. The Andromeda is developing its red foliage now.

And it's amazing what a few days of sunshine did for the tulips. There is another yellow one around the other side of the house. Apparently, the deer do not like the yellow-flavored tulips.

The Black Tartarian cherry tree is covered in cherry blossoms now.

The laggardly Bing is always about a week behind its brethren to the left.

Smitty was keeping an eye out for any furry mammals. 

The rain has returned for most of this week. It'll be good sewing weather. I'll continue on with my quilting, and make a stab at getting the first row of Jawbreaker blocks sewn together. Also, I want to bake a skillet cherry cobbler for two. We're almost out of ice cream, but flush with vanilla. That will go with our cobbler. 

If I run out of things to keep me busy, there are two quilt backs I need to make. I've not been in any hurry with those since I'm still waiting for a string of warm days to set up the sawhorse and plywood tables for sandwiching the 14 quilts that are in need. The most recent warm weather has been spent doing gardening things, but I'm reserving the next stretch of warm weather for making quilt sandwiches. 

Okay, so Happy Saturday, Everybody. I'm on my way to do some slow-stitching. What's on your to-do list for today?