Cinco de Mayo

Good morning, my friends. I'm just home from a nice breakfast with Sue. Aside from that, not much has happened this morning. There hasn't even been time for slow-stitching. As I write, I'm waiting for Mike to drink a cup of coffee, and then we'll head off to the grocery store. We're eating dinner out tonight, but the afternoon will be my own. No plans except doing whatever I want to do.

So let's back up to yesterday, shall we? It was a luxuriously slow day. Not having to sandwich any more quilts put me in a good mood, right from the get-go. Since I'm focusing on getting more quilting action this year, it seemed like the best place to start was at the quilting machine. The Merry, Merry Snowmen are from Bunny Hill Designs.

One of the things I like about these patterns is that there are photographs of the quilt that show the quilting. Each block is shown on heavy card stock, and it gives me some ideas about how to quilt the blocks. You can see how they did the first two blocks in the image below.

Of course, it took me a bit to get the machine set up. I needed to switch out the foot for the regular universal foot. (My last project was using a square foot to quilt straight lines.) As usual, my quilting fairy godmother, Ila, made sure I had the right threads for the job. Thank you, Ila. On top, I'm using this Coats & Clark 30 weight variegated thread.

It's only slightly variegated, but mainly tan.

On the bottom, I'm using this light tan Omni thread from Superior Threads. This is a 40 weight thread.

It's all one color, and a good match for the quilt back.

Before I could start any stitching, Smitty checked outside for signs of any impending invasion. With his reassurance, I could quilt in complete safety.

So let's just check the tension. I flipped a piece from the back to the front. Top tension looks good.

And the back looks good too. It's always nice when everything is properly adjusted without having to fiddle with any knobs or screws.

There are nine blocks in this quilt. I started at the left edge in the middle with Block 4. First, I quilted around the edges of the applique.

Looking at the pattern image, the background here was just a simple filler. I didn't use the same one they'd used, but I found one on Pinterest that I liked. A hook and two loops followed by another hook, and on we go.

For this square in a square cornerstone, I did pretty much what they did in the pattern.

For this rectangle, they'd done a diagonal grid. I did a Christmas tree here. Sorry it doesn't show up very well. I've messed with the brightness and contrast to try to make it more visible.

And here, I outlined the snowman and then did a little looping line.

Here's how that looks from the back.

My goal was to do three blocks per day, but I spent so much time setting up the machine, I decided to stop after this first one. If I do two blocks per day from here on, I'll have this ready for binding by the weekend. When I left it yesterday, it was needle down on Block 5. If there's time today, I'll start there.

It was lunch time. I first went outside to check the watering on the annuals. While I was out, I took pictures of every blooming thing. This is my favorite rhododendron, pretty much in full bloom now. You can see the dogwood in the background.

There's a carpet of blue from the lithodora.

This azalea is so bright I have to back off on the saturation when I edit my pictures.

This rhododendron has more buds than open flowers, but it's trying its best to catch up with the one at the front of the house.

There are lots of flowers on the blueberries. I'm excited about these.

We're seeing some cherries on the cherry trees. They bloomed at a good time. We should have lots of cherries this year.

The first flowers are appearing on the tomatoes.

And after a long wait, the replacement poppies have finally sprouted.

This peony is still being a teaser. I'm thinking by next week, we'll see some flowers.

Here's another rhododendron with more buds than blooms.

Okay, and on the slow-stitching front, I finished Block 7 for Le Jardin.

My first stop in the sewing room was to trace the Santa Quartet.

After that, I wanted to put borders on the block for Le Jardin, but I first fixed the border on the previous block. I neglected to add the cornerstones to this originally, and so I did that first.

Sadie helped me with that.

And then I could put borders on Block 7. This one will be in the middle of the quilt, and so it has cornerstones at all four corners.

Here are the seven blocks I have for this quilt so far.

While we watched the news last night, I took the first stitches on the Santa Quartet.

Smitty was exhausted after a day of guarding the furtress. I found him napping in the afternoon sunshine.

Okay, so that brings me to time to head out to the grocery store. It's not my favorite thing to do on this, my birthday, but Mike's birthday is Thursday, and need to pick up some things to make his birthday breakfast of Eggs Benedict. Since I have PT tomorrow, today will have to work. And so I need to be on my way. Happy Cinco de Mayo, everybody. Don't drink too many margaritas tonight, okay?