Summery Day

Good morning, my friends. The Summer Solstice is still a couple of weeks away, but it sure felt like summer yesterday. I took time in the morning to stitch Tiny Treasure #55. This one has stem stitch, stem fill, basketweave stitch, and straight stitch.

From there, I headed outside to check on the flowers. There were just four poppies this year. The poppies are biannuals, but I’ve been getting flowers from them every year. I’m not sure why this year was so skimpy. There was one other, in addition to the three in the image below. It got beaten up by the rain, and its stem was broken. These self-seed, and so I directed its head back into the barrel.
 

And wow. Look at that! This is the Fairy Princess peony. Amazing.

I’ve erected some fencing around the Stargazer lily. These fence cages were already made, and so I couldn’t adjust the size. The bit that’s left outside the cage didn’t have a flower on it originally. Now, it does. So after I took that picture, I worked with it to get that straggler inside the fence too. Now all the flowers are safe.

Heading back inside, I found these two demonstrating what it’s like to dwell in the sublime.

I had some things to do inside, but eventually, I made my way to the quilting. The interior…the part inside the narrow colored border…is all done now.

Here’s a peek at the back.

I left it needle down at one of the border appliques. I have in mind to outline these, and then connect them with something similar to what’s done on the rest of the quilt. Sometimes I have to adjust my expectations and my design after I’ve tried sewing it for a while. They don’t always work the way I think they will.

Heading into the sewing room, this pattern was lying on the table just inside the room.

I decided to pick out the fabrics I’ll use when I get started on it. To the ones below, there will also be a white background fabtic. The gray is some I used to make a Halloween costume for Erik when he was six years old. Let’s see…that would have been 1985. It’s safe to say that has been in my stash for a very long time…longer than I’ve been making quilts.

But I can’t start on that until I make two more blocks for the Northern Wilderness project. I decided to start with the salmon block.

There is very little in the way of instructions for these. I appreciate the lettering and the measurements, but figuring out how to sew it all together can be a bit of a puzzle.

So, these are all the pieces I’ll need to make the quilt block background.

The next step was to lay out the pieces and sew the different units together. These are the units I’ll need:

This first one was pretty easy to figure out.

I made one and then checked my measurements before going any farther. Just right.

Then, I could begin to lay out the pieces.

Just then I had to lay down a protective armor over the block when Sadie showed up and decided it was a perfect spot for grooming herself.

Next, I needed to make this unit.

Figuring out how to orient the triangles is tricky. For my first attempt…well that ain’t right.

So, I took it apart and tried again. There we go.

And then I could sew the whole thing together.

The next step just added some pieces to two sides of the unit above.

Those were pretty easy. Then, I could lay out the whole block.

It was getting close to quitting time by then, and I left it as you see it. I’ll have some time to sew it together today.

There are a few things on today’s agenda. I’m leaving early to get a pedicure, but I’ll be home before lunch time. We finished off the strawberry ice cream last night. Not to worry, though. I’ve been searching for rhubarb for weeks, and I finally found some at Whole Foods last week. Today I’ll make a Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake. I made it last year, and it was so good, I added it to the list of annual seasonal desserts. Aside from that, it’ll be a mostly sewing day.

If you’ve appreciated the grammar, spelling, and punctuation in this post, you can thank Smitty for his careful editing. He worked so hard on this he had to take a morning nap. As for me, I’m going to try to get the day’s Tiny Treasure stitched up before I need to leave. Have a good day, Everybody!