Home Stretch

Good morning, my friends. It's a day for celebration. Today will be my last day of physical therapy. As I've grudgingly admitted, it has been very helpful. I was to return to the doctor tomorrow, but I canceled that appointment. My shoulder isn't completely pain-free, but it's improved enough that it isn't a constant annoyance. When I got into bed last night, I realized I hadn't thought about it all day. For now, I'll just keep doing the PT exercises at home. Surprisingly, it feels better on days when I do some exercise.

I've finished quilting all the blocks for the Homestead quilt. This first one is called "Anvil."

Here's how that looks from the back.

For this big Log Cabin, I used a motif I saw on Pinterest, which consists of diagonal lines round and round and round.

Here's how that looks from the back

Finally, this block called "God's Eye."

On the back, I didn't quite capture the whole thing in my image, but you get the idea.

Now, I've left it needle down at the middle horizontal sashing. Today's goal is to quilt all the horizontal sashings. I'll do the vertical ones tomorrow. After that, it will just be the outer border, and then it will be ready for binding.

From there, I checked on the watering in the greenhouse and took a walk around the yard. The Coral Sunset peony is fully opened now. There are two open flowers and many more coming.

Also, another flower has opened on the Edda clematis. Neither of these is completely open yet. When they're open, you won't see the ruffly edge to the petals.

And I noticed I could see the cherries on the cherry trees at a distance. It's going to be a big crop this year.

Back inside, I made good on my promise to get started on Row 5 for the Stair Steps project. Thankfully, Smitty was there to keep me company while I did all the cutting.

If you can remember, each block has a common color running diagonally from corner to corner. In this row of five blocks, there will be two pinks, one yellow, one blue, and one purple. I've cut all the blocks for those parts. Also, I've cut the "stair steps" from neutral fabrics. In some cases, I'm using the back side of the fabric.

And then, each block requires an additional 32 scrappy blocks. When I cut these, I neglected to subtract the eight common color blocks, and so I ended up cutting 40. I can use the eight additional ones on the next block.

As I dig through my scraps looking for appropriate pieces, I'm cutting as many as I can from each one and tossing the extras in a bin to be used on other blocks. Now that I've cut everything for the first block in the row, the remaining blocks will not require as much cutting (if that makes sense).

Before I sat down here, I started some laundry. It's early for something like that, but I want to get it finished before I need to leave at 2:00 p.m. Leaving mid-afternoon makes for a short day. The bird feeders are empty again, and so I'll need to fill those. I'll check on the seedlings at the same time. We're hoping to get started planting our vegetable garden tomorrow. The garden will be small this year, and we have the next four days to do it. Rain is forecast for Monday, and so the time is now. I don't expect it will take longer than a day.

As for the rest of today, my first priority is always going to be the quilting. I'll aim for getting the horizontal sashings done today. If there's still time in the day, I'll get started sewing together the first block for the Stair Steps quilt. With a shortened day ahead of me, it's best I get started. It's Hump Day today, and with it being my last day of physical therapy, it feels celebratory at this end. What are you celebrating today?