new deck furniture, bread, new quilt started

Friday morning (6/16) we had breakfast on the deck again, then moved around our existing furniture to get ready for the delivery of our new furniture!!  

Michael left just after 8 AM for a routine ear appointment and I headed down to fire up Miss Scarlett.  We had severe thunderstorms Thursday night…so no quilting for me  :~).  Michael was home by 10:30 (just as I was finishing up sandwich dough) in time for our furniture delivery (which they fit VERY carefully through both VERY narrow doorways):  

the old glider moving from the deck to the front porch

Within 10 minutes of them leaving Michael was trying out various pillows to see what would work:  

His faithful companion by his side:  

By 1 PM the quilt was finished:  

the bread was in the oven (the extra 1/2 went to our neighbors Ann Mary & Jim to thank them for watching our cat while we were away last weekend), 

and I had a label stitched out (no, it's not cleaned up yet!):  

Yes, my friend Linda donated this quilt top to support my efforts to get patriotic quilts out to veterans.  For once this will not be local, it will be mailed to the recipient…but I’m not going to say a lot about it just yet, as there is a small (VERY small) chance that someone in the recipient’s family reads this blog….so final details once it is bound and delivered  :~).  I spent the rest of the afternoon on a new patriotic quilt.  I am trying to develop 5 – 6 simple patriotic quilt patterns that I can reliably knock out each year.  I have 2 patterns typed up and this is a third pattern I am developing.  By developing I just mean sizing the blocks and borders for the most effective use of my fabric and figuring out how many strips to cut to get the size quilt that I want.  I have been spending a lot of time with my calculator, toting things up and trying them out.  I did get a few blocks sewn up:

Then laid them out, can you see the difference between the 2 pictures?  

#1

#2

I get a secondary pattern with the first one, so that is what I think I’m going with.  Michael and I got cleaned up and changed and headed out to FMCP to work concessions for the play.  We left at 6 PM and were home by 9:30 to watch just a bit of TV before bed…we were both beat  :~).