Last of the Lemurs

Good morning, my friends. Our air quality was a little better yesterday. By afternoon, our sky was looking more blue than the sick yellow of the past few days. It’s looking even better this morning. As is my usual routine in the morning, I checked in on the garden. There were a couple of zucchini to harvest, and the weeds are still manageable. After that, I filled the bird feeders and then headed back inside for my slow-stitching.

Block 7 for “Home is Where My Flock Is” is finished now.

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

And this was my goal for August’s

so I’ll link up there when the party starts at the end of the month.

This morning, I’ll take the first stitches on the final block for “A Year in the Garden.”

There were a few things I needed to do, but I had some time before lunch to work on the Lemurs. When my timer went off, I had it this far. There were only about ten pieces to go. It was tempting to keep going, but I decied to take a break.

After lunch, I had one small housekeeping chore to do, but then I headed back to the sewing room Sadie was my emotional support cat.

After another hour or so, I had all the pieces in place. The whole thing was peeled up off the teflon pressing sheet. Surprisingly, there were no gaps. I noticed a few as I was making it, and I’d already filled in those spots. For its picture, I laid it on that background fabric. Nothing is fused.

Asking for a consult from the Retired Resident Engineer, we had differing opinions about how it should be finished off. We could both live with something like what I’ve pictured below.

I’ll give it an asymmetrical border, on just two sides, and then keep the background and outer border the same. There was a strip of green from a binding I’d done at some point, and I can use that for the narrow border. Mike thought the lemurs needed to be “front and center.” We were in agreement about that, but I thought they needed a place to sit, rather than floating in space. I think we negotiated a settlement by doing it this way.

After that, I cleaned up the substantial mess I'd made in the sewing room. It's nice to have the chaos cleared away. And that was enough time in the sewing room, but there was still a lot of time left in the day. I decided to get a head start on the dessert I'd planned for today. This is Caramel Frosted Zucchini Pecan Bars. 

It's more cake-like than bar-like. Think of it as a fluffy zucchini bread with caramel frosting, and you've got it. It's very easy to make, and it's a great way to use up zucchini. You can find the recipe right here. The recipe will suggest lining the pan with parchment, but I found that to be unnecessary. I just sprayed mine with no-stick, and we had no problem getting it out of the pan for our dessert last night.

After I had the sewing room cleaned up, I brought the Kittens quilt over to my work space a laid it there. I'll have to figure out what I'm going to use for a binding, and I'm hoping to get it sewn on today. (I'd like to get going on the hand-stitching.) When I laid it down, Sadie claimed it immediately. It is a kitten quilt, right? Isn't she a kitten?

Probably, I’ll take a break from the lemurs for a day or two. Since I’m still focusing on getting the backlog of finished quilts quilted, I want to keep going with the Kittens and bring it to a finish. Also, I want to make August's yellow Inverted Star block. When I've caught up with other things a little bit, I'll get back to the Lemurs. I want to take a little more time to think about them before I commit to any particular background design. Once they’re fused to a background, there’s no going back. When I’ve settled on a background, I can get on with the thread work.

Today is a grocery shopping day. Also, I want to get some chili started in the slow cooker, and I’m going to bakc some cornbread to go with that. So between grocery shopping and that, it’ll probably be mid-afternoon before I can get any more sewing done. If I can decide on a binding for the Kittens, there should be plenty of time to get it sewn on, and maybe get a start on the hand-stitching.

Okay then. That’s all I have for you today. It’s good to be breathing a little easier. Probably by tomorrow, I’ll be able to whack down the weeds in the garden. As for today, it’s still going to be mostly hanging out inside and staying cool. I hope you’re keeping cool at your end.