Back to Basics

Good morning, my friends. Yesterday ended up being a less hectic day than expected. We left for the grocery store a little later than I’d hoped. Originally, I’d planned to start some chili and bake some cornbread when we got home. But then, we decided while doing our shopping we’d just get a pizza from Papa Murphy’s on the way home. Pizza. It saves lives.

Before we left, I had time to take the first stitches on December’s block for A Year in the Garden. Mainly, I was just using the leftover bits from the last time I worked on it.

Mike had gone back to bed, and so I spent some time in the garden. There, I harvested four more zucchini. Zucchini relish has been added to next week’s agenda. The zucchini are starting to pile up.

I’m loving the color the zinnias are adding. 

There are about a dozen different varieties of sunflowers this year, and two of them are giants. These have grown above our 8-foot fence now. I keep hoping they’ll bloom soon.

So, we did our grocery shopping, and it was well into the noon hour before we got home. We had lunch, and then I took some time to square up the Kittens quilt for binding.

I was happy to find a good brown in my stash for the binding. It’s sewn on, and I can start the hand-stitching today.

There was still time left in the day, and so I did all the cutting for August’s yellow Inverted Star block.

Smitty helped me sort through my yellows, and then he helped me square up the resulting half square triangles.

There was just enough time left in the day to lay out the pieces. This is where I’ll start today. These need to be sewn together, and then I’ll give it a solid yellow border.

With those things caught up, I can return to the lemurs. 

I’ll need to make their background. When they are fused to their background, I’ll add some batting and do the thread work through the top layer and the batting only. I won’t add the back until the thread work is finished. When the back is added, I’ll quilt it lightly and it will be ready for binding. 

Also on today’s agenda, I want to hoe the garden. It’s gone a few days longer than I’d hoped, but it actually doesn’t look too bad. Either way, I enjoy being out there a few times a week, and there is always something new to surprise me.

So, off I go. There’s much to do, and I’m ready to get to it. In closing, Smitty and Sadie would like to wish you a