Stitching Fast and Slow

Good morning, my friends. Well, I skipped a day of blogging, and so I have a lot to show you. Happily, my dental appointment is behind me, and I'm good for another year. And, look ma! No cavities. Always a good outcome.

Backing up to Monday morning, I cut back the peonies to the ground. We'll look for them next spring. For now, I'm enjoying the last gasp of the flowers. This first one is the Firefighter dahlia. When we left on our trip mid-September, it had not a single bud on it. I was threatening to replace it. When we got home, there were three flowers and more buds. So here’s a handy gardening tip: If fertilizer, water, and TLC don’t work, try threats and intimidation.

There are still a few flowers on the echinacea, but these plants are looking pretty well bloomed out. I cut some of the taller stalks that fell over. I’ll let the bloomers stay until they die.

This is the Bumble Rumble dahlia…still blooming away.

This is the Checkers dahlia.

This is the Fuzzy Wuzzy dahlia. I’m going to have to cut these back and move them inside the garage soon. They’re still blooming to beat the band, so I guess we’ll just watch for the first freezing temperatures and let them carry on until then.

These are zinnias. I enjoyed the heck out of these.

Another zinnia. I might plant a whole row of zinnias next year. They brought me great gardening joy this year.

These next ones are all in the bee garden. My phone calls me this next one is Clarkia.

This is coreopsis. This is a new one to the bee garden this year.

The Black-eyed Susans are new too. I think I might have bought a separate packet of seeds for these and mixed it into the Northwest wildflower mix.

This is mallow…another newbie to the bee garden.

This is our old friend godetia. It is well-established in the bee garden.

If you’ve been following for a while, then you might remember that I have a large vegetable garden plot. When it started feeling like too much to care for, I made the vegetable portion of the garden smaller. Still, there’s a large fenced area, and just letting the unplanted portion go to weeds was dispiriting. 

About five years ago, I started throwing out pounds of wildflower seed to try to establish color there. This has been the most gratifying bee garden so far. Lots of new flowers have appeared, and the previous newbies are filling in more and more. There is still plenty of weedy tangle, but the flowers are nice, and the bees love them. It’s gotta be good for the vegetables, right?

Speaking of gratifying, Smitty is back in his happy place on the corner of our deck. It’s good to be home.

There’s been precious little time for sewing this week, but I grab a half hour here and there. I filled in my embroidery hoop…

And then moved to the next position.

And then I pretty well filled that in too.

So I moved my hoop to encompass the last of it. I’ve stitched even a little more since I took the picture below. I’m expecting to finish this today.

Okay, and making progress on my quilts-to-be-quilted pile is still my first sewing priority. Quilting has commenced on the Cats in Pajamas. As a reminder, this is what it looks like. I’d planned to do one row at a time, but I’m working with the vertical rows.  

It was hard to decide what to do with this. And what color thread should I use? I was leaning toward white both top and bottom. When I pulled the cover off my machine and found it already threaded with those colors, I was satisfied that the quilting gods had spoken loudly and clearly.

Speaking of gods…His Worship was there to advise me on the design.

We finally settled on this design by Angela Walters. There’s a little bit of chit-chat at the beginning of her video. She’ll start sewing about a minute in, and you can see her design.

I’m doing it block by block. I liked the wavy lines part of this design, but I didn’t like how she filled it in. I decided to do a sort of loop de loop design in mine. And how could I do anything without my cat? He helped me adjust my tension.

And then I went to work. Here’s the first block. I’m doing them all the same. So far, I’ve done two of four vertical rows.

Here’s how that’s looking from the back. The quilt is large at 72 x 72 inches, and I feel a little as if I’m losing a wrestling match with it. I have some other ideas about what to do with the sashings, spacer blocks, and the outer border. That probably won’t happen before the weekend.

I’m kind of excited to show you what I’m going to do next. Matthew is an engineer by education and experience. He’s also a musician, and a deejay. He does some gigs on the side, and he’s adopted the zebra as his symbol. Without saying more than I should, I’ll tell you that in addition to being smart and talented, he’s also very funny. (I’m his mom…I have to brag on him a little, doncha know.) Since he was a little boy he’s had a delightfully offbeat sense of humor, and I used to tell him he was the zebra with the horizontal stripes. So, I’m happy to see that he’s embraced that part of himself.

A few days ago he texted the head of a zebra he’d created using AI. (I think he’s trying to create a logo.) I looked at it and said, “I can make a quilt from that.” Well, that got an enthusiastic response, and so that’s what I’ll be working on next. He's requested queen sized.

I have some figuring to do. It’s similar to a pixelated design. Already I’ve decided to cut the pieces to 4 inches (3-1/2 finished). To make it queen size, I'll add two rows of the background colors to each side, following the pattern of colors already there. Cool, huh?

So, I haven’t made any more progress on Northern Wilderness. I’m hoping to get back into the sewing room today, but it’s also a grocery shopping day. It's a terribly long list. Like I said, it’s a busy week. We still have to take Smitty to the vet tomorrow. He seems fine. We’re not expecting any sort of dire news about him, but he’s 14. He’s just like the rest of us. At his age, anything could happen. And then the kids are coming for dinner on Friday. I’m looking forward to that, and we’re keeping it simple, but I have some cooking to do ahead of time. 

Okay then. I guess I’ll get to it. Mike has gone back to bed for a while. We'll preward our grocery shopping trip with a trip to McDonald's for our beloved Egg McMuffins. ("Preward." Did you see what I did there?)

Have a good day, Everybody!