My rocky relationship with Mother Nature on a Slow Stitching Sunday...

Hello all ... let me get this out of the way....Hot enough for you???  We've been sweltering for the past week or more... upper 90 degree temperatures with sky high humidity... the air you can wear... it is suppose to break today with rain this afternoon and then next week they are forecasting seasonal weather... temps in the mid  80s with lows at night in the 60's... oh that would be heaven... last night I went out to water and it was 89 degrees at 8:45 pm... ugh... now I want to believe the weather guys but last week they forecast rain for Wednesday... and it did rain Wednesday...but it also came down in buckets on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday too... none of those days had rain in the forecast on the 11:00 pm news...surprise surprise surprise... said in my best Gomer Pyle voice...

And because of this horrendous weather my flowers aren't doing well... I've lost dozens of wave petunias... some were in the ground ... some were in containers ... but they just keep dying and dying and dying... I've watered and fertilized to no avail... and then there were the Japanese beetles ... and the deer... this little guy greeted me last evening when I came out to water...

don't know where Mama was... so Mother Nature has given me scorching sun, torrential downpours, Japanese beetles, ravenous deer, squirrels and bunnies ...I'm not happy with any of these presents... I am already looking forward to Fall... cool, enjoyable, open the windows up and breathe the air... I hope Mother Nature make amends by September.

I have my fingers crossed for my dahlia bed...here is what it looked like a month ago...

and here it is today...

the zinnas in the front are still lagging, but almost all the tubers I planted have come up... and here is one of the first blooms...

so far the deer/squirrels/rabbits haven't bothered them... I sprayed for insects and I've watered and fertilized... we shall see... we shall see...

On the stitching front I did a couple more patriotic pieces... first is this little Betsy Ross... just a snippet of the Sheepish Design chart called "Betsy"...

this is the first time I did a flat finish like this with and arched top... it came out pretty good. Now when I went to stitch this I realized the chart had the wrong flag ... it was a flag with lots of stars like now...not like it would have looked back then... so I made some adjustments  and made it a Betsy Ross flag... here's a side view of this piece...

next time I may add a layer of batting to the front... I just attached the stitching to sticky board on the front and some cotton fabric to sticky board for the back, hot melt glued the pompom trim to the front and sandwiched the pieced together... I'm displaying it on a accent table in my living room...

hard to get a good pic with the sun coming in the window... and I added these cute Jim Shore birds...

the piece was called Red, White and Bluebird... got it on Amazon.

I also stitched up this freebie from Notforgotten Farm called Flagmaker...

I think this is Betsy's daughter...both pieces are stitched on 32 ct linen I painted with Rit dyes.

On Monday two quilts returned from Quilting by David and wait for it... I got the binding on BOTH of them by Wednesday... OMG... I have 2 modes for binding quilts ... it  is to either quickly get a quilt bound or wait 18 months... I'm happy I didn't wait on these... first one is Chamomile ... you can see the pattern here...

love the soft clean look of the low volumes... the sashing really makes this quilt but it does take time to get all those intersections to match... the panto is called Songbirds and here's a bit of a close up...

I love bird stuff as evidenced by the bird pillowcases I made a couple of years ago...they do coordinate nicely with the quilt.

And the second quilt is a little nine patch done in American Jane and those reproduction prints ... a friend of mine refers to the repro prints as looking like men's boxer shorts fabrics... and they kinda do...LOL

I made all those little 3" finished 9 patches years ago... I "planned" to add an applique border ... however years  and years have passed and it ain't happening... finished is better than hanging around... this one is about 55" square ... a nice throw quilt.

Getting those bindings on kick started my sewing mojo and I spent a couple of productive days down in my sewing studio... check back tomorrow for a rare Monday posting of what I'm working on...I've got 2 quilts going at the same time and a couple more ideas I can't wait to start...

Well I already dined with Elliott and his parents ... we did brunch... I might venture out and look for some petunias to replace the ones that went belly up... or I might just stay home and sew a bit more... not sure yet ...

Hope you have a productive week ahead... and a cooler one too... I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts ... and then I'll check out what everyone else is doing... I'm sure to see some great projects...

happy stitching-
carol fun