Weeds and Flowers

Good morning, my friends. I'm writing fast again this morning. I'm heading out early for a haircut. I'm going to try to get the morning's Tiny Treasure stitched before I go, but no promises. Here's the one from yesterday. I give you Tiny Treasure #50. This one has stem stitch, straight stitch, satin stitch, and feather stitch.

From there, I girded up my loins to do some weeding. I did as much as I’d planned to: weeded the herb garden and pulled some annoying vetch out of the lithodora. In an extreme act of mercy, I pruned our one little rose bush. The deer have had their way with it. We actually planted five rose bushes when we moved into this house. We never got any flowers. The deer ate every single bud. We finally took out the roses and planted an herb garden. Then, someone gave me this little rose as a gift. We planted it, but I’m afraid it’s main job is feeding the deer. Occasionally, it is allowed to flower. When it does, the flowers are very fragrant.

Okay, and along with all that, I filled my bucket with weeds. It just about killed me. Ending my gardening day by wandering around checking on the peonies was a salve for my aching bones. I was pretty sure the final two had bloomed, and I was not disappointed. This is the Fairy Princess peony.

This bush is covered in buds. If they bloom all at once (as I think they will), it will be splendiforous.

Also…the Garden Treasures peony has opened. There are two big flowers on this bush, and more coming.

Now all five have bloomed. This next one is Coral Sunset.

This one is “Joker.” It was deep bright pink when it first opened. As it gets more like a pompom, its color has faded some. It’s still beautiful.

And we’re saying good-bye to the Lavender Whisper. I took this picture when it first bloomed. It’s now bloomed out, and all of its flowers are gone.

Also making a strong showing…the lavender. I’m looking forward to more Bees Knees, especially with the hot weather coming up next week. Mainly, though, I love lavender. It’s my favorite fragrance. I planted lavender in the herb garden long before I ever heard of the Bees Knees. That was just a bonus. 

I’ve also made lavender blossom jelly from this. It was good, but then someone suggested it tasted like laundry soap. After that, I couldn’t eat it without tasting laundry soap. Weird. I didn’t taste it until someone else suggested it. 

Okay. I took some time to ice my knees, did some housework, ate lunch, took a nap. Finally, it was time to get busy on my quilt binding. I’ve barely turned the fourth corner now. I’m hoping I’ll have time to finish this today.

From there, I headed into the sewing room to make the second block for “Where the Cows Come Home.” This block is the one the quilt is named for. I first needed to create the block background.

The pattern suggested using a teflon pressing sheet, and creating the whole applique before fusing anything to the background. I think I might have done the first block like that. In any case, it seemed like good advice. I put the diagram under the pressing sheet. It makes placement easy.

And then I created the whole applique on the pressing sheet.

When it was finished, I could peel it off the pressing sheet in a single piece and then fuse it to the background.

After that, just the top-stitching remained. (I did a little trimming of the roof line. It didn’t look right to me.) I’m doing all the top-stitching for these blocks in a dark brown thread. Usually, I’ll match the thread to the color of the piece. This quilt seems “rustic” to me, and I feel like that dark brown makes it more so.

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

Okay, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have for sewing today. I’ll probably be home around lunch time from my haircut, but I’ve also committed (to myself) to making some strawberry ice cream. When we got our vaccines a few days ago, we were at a grocery store pharmacy. They had some nice looking strawberries. I have to buy large berries. Mike can’t have the seeds, and so I cut the seedy sides off so that he can enjoy them too. And, yes, I could eat them without him, but I wouldn’t enjoy eating them in front of him. So…anyway…it’s not always easy to find those big ones. When I saw them, I realized I shouldn’t pass them by. It’s a lengthy process, and I won’t even be able to churn it until tomorrow. So there’s that. It’s worth the effort, though. It’s the best strawberry ice cream I’ve ever eaten. Anywhere. Anytime.

If there’s time for sewing, I will make finishing the quilt binding my top priority. If there’s any time for the sewing room, I’ll get started on the next block for “Accross the Wide Missouri.” These blocks all have a story associated with them. I’ll share this one when I share the finished block. There are two colorways in the image below. I’m leaning toward the more colorful one toward the bottom.

Okay, so you’d think someone who’s writing fast would avoid yammering on for half the morning, but there you go. Sometimes I can’t control my blabbermouth. Now…I really must be going. Have a good day, Everybody!