Exhausting Day

Good morning, my friends. Before I say anything else, I should say that I'm feeling significantly better today. Most of yesterday morning was spent at urgent care. I like that they have a section on their website that allows you to insert yourself into the line before you leave home. There was no one in the waiting room when I arrived, and so it didn't matter, but it's still a nice feature. They gave me a second nebulizer treatment while I was there, and they sent me home with a portable nebulizer machine so that I can give myself treatments at home. As of this morning, I'm breathing easier than I have in a full week.

After that, we had errands to run in town. I had medicines to pick up at the pharmacy, we needed bird seed and groceries, and so it was past 3:00 p.m. before I could get back to my regular life. The nebulizer treatments make me feel jittery, and so I wasn't feeling the best. It seemed a walk around the garden was a good place to start the "life" part of my day. 

The lavender is just beautiful right now.

Cherries are turning red. (I have plans for you, my darlings.)

The daylilies are putting on a show right now.

And I was happy to see the stargazer lilies are starting to bloom.

Also...the dahlia has peeled back one of its petals. I can see now that this is the "Checkers" dahlia.

When it opens, it will look like this:

Thankfully, Smitty kept me company as I wandered around, and so I was completely safe from any rampaging critters that might be on the loose.

Taking a walk around fortified me a bit, and so I decided to do some more work on the Yoder sisters. The third sister has her right arm extended and one braid.

When she was finished, she joined the other two.

The fourth sister has her left arm extended and two braids. Their aprons are slightly different from the first two as well.

When I had them all finished, I lined them up for their picture.

And then, I fused them to the background.

In a comment, my friend, SueS, noticed what I'd noticed too. The "yellow" sister's head appears to be floating above her dress. She has no neck.

So, let's just take a look at these placement diagrams for a second. Before I go on, note the "bonnet" on Girl #1 there at the left. I was given the option of putting a bonnet on some or all of them, but I liked the hat better. The two middle girls (above) are made like Girl #1. They are identical except for color, and the number of braids. Oh yes, and I guess their aprons are different too. In any case, neither of them has a neck.

But when you go to Girls #2 and #3, there is a neck piece, and it's shown in the placement diagram.

Girl #1? Nothing.

Okay, so I'm thinking this was omitted from the pattern in error, but no worries. Despite having it fused to the background, I believe I can still peel those bits up with some sharp tweezers, and slide a little neck piece under the yellow girl. It doesn't matter so much with the blue girl, but I might do it there too. I've done this successfully with applique in the past. Sometimes it will fray the fabrics a bit, but the top-stitching will fix that.

All right, so adding the neck and top-stitching is next for this. Quilting was neglected yesterday, and so I'll start there first today. 

I'd like to finish up the sashings, and I have a goal of quilting all the pieced blocks today. Whatever I decide, my quilting limit is one hour. I'll do as much as I can. When I've finished with that, I'll continue on with the Yoder sisters. 

With yesterday being such a hellish day, I'm giving myself a mostly sewing day today. It's cloudy out as I'm writing, but our forecast has us heading for some hot weather over the next couple of days. It seems like a good day to water the flower pots, and, as usual, the bird feeders need filling. Aside from that, it's going to be an all sewing day. I'm looking forward to it. 

If I'm feeling particularly energetic (or if I just get tired of sewing), I might try a new recipe for some Moravian Sugar Bread. It looked good in the picture. The bread dough is made with some mashed potatoes (weird, huh?). I noted some folks in the reader comments suggesting substituting instant mashed potato buds for that. I happen to have an old box left over from a camping trip. Seems like a good way to use it up.

All right...so off I go. I'm anticipating a better day than I've had in a week, and so I'll just get right to it. Breakfast first, some slow-stitching, and then all sewing, all the time.