Picking Up Steam

Good morning, my friends. A lot was accomplished sewing wise yesterday. Possibly the Lemurs used up my supply of sewing mojo, and I needed a break from sewing for a day or two. Yesterday saw me picking up the pace again. First, I finished January's block for Pieces of the Heart.

Actually, I’m not certain what the name of this project should be. It occurs to me that “Pieces of the Heart” is the business name of the woman who designed it. Her name is Sandy Gervais. I’ve searched high and low for this pattern online, but I can’t find it. It has a copyright of 1998, so it’s been around a while. Whatever the case, I’ll stick with the name I’ve given it unless I decide on something else down the road.

Since I wasn’t expecting to finish it yesterday, that put me in something of a stitching emergency, doncha know. So I hurried and traced the ninth (and final) block for Le Jardin. I’ll start on that this morning.

While I was doing that I had three mini loaves of zucchini bread baking. They came out of the oven about the time I finished my tracing. These will be for Matthew to take home with him after our scheduled meet-up today.

That might not happen. He called yesterday to give me a heads-up that he wasn’t feeling well. If we don’t go, I’ll freeze these and give them to him when we’re able to reschedule.

Last time I checked in on the garden, there were several pickling cucumbers that were so, so close to being ready for harvest. So, I checked in with them around lunch time and found about half a dozen to add to the pile in the fridge. And HOORAY! I need four pounds for a batch of pickles, and so I have all I need now.

\

Okay, so it was time to get after my quilting. I was quilting the bottom row/border of pieced blocks. Pretty much I stuck with the terry twist and looping themes. Starting with this yellow block in the middle of the row…

I kept moving to the left…

Until I reached the corner.

Then I returned to the middle and stitched the blocks to the right…

Until I reached the end there.

And then I did a line of loops in the adjacent blue border. 

Now, I’ve turned the corner, and I’ll work my way across the pieced blocks/border on the right side of the quilt.

From there, I headed into the sewing room. Finally, I got some help from Sadie. 

She helped me decide on some fabrics to finish off the Cozy Quilt stitchery. When I was ready to trim the block to size, she held the ruler for me. (It’s a good way to lose your whiskers.)

And forget that link I posted yesterday. I found exactly what I needed at Quilter's Cache. Despite looking in Quilter's Cache earlier, I somehow missed their block instructions. I looked at the block designated “Sawtooth Star,” but it looked different from this one. This one was labeled simply, “Sawtooth.” Pawing through my stash, I wanted something in the pink or red range to bring out the colors in the embroidery. I was looking for something floral, but most of the floral fabrics were of too large a scale. Then, I happened on this one with the circles. It’s been in my stash a long, long time. Finding a coordinating red, I sewed the flying geese.

And then I sewed the whole thing together.

I decided on the fabric below for a back. I’m realizing I should have put something there for scale. Just know that those solid black squares are about the size of a quarter. It’s a good scale for my little quilt, which will finish at 12 inches square.

There wasn’t enough red for the binding, and so I went in search of an aqua that matched the print. You can see it there on the left side of the image below. 

That brought me to the end of my sewing day. I’ll aim to finish this off today. Probably there won’t be a lot of time for sewing today. Either I’m going to walk with Matthew, or if he’s not feeling up to it, I’m going to make some pickles. Neither thing should take all day, but it will cut into my sewing time.

We had some excitement here Saturday evening. In the image below, you can see the gable of our pump house. We’re on a well where we live. With all the watering we do in summer, sometimes our accumulator tank runs dry, and we have no water pressure in the house. When it happened Saturday, Mike walked down to the pump house to be sure everything was working as it should be. (It was.) When he closed the door, it didn’t shut tight, and so he slammed it, sending an angry mob of hornets after him, chasing him back to the house. No stings, fortunately. Certainly, it could have ended in an ER visit. He didn’t see the nest until they came after him. It’s about the size of a volleyball.

He’ll take care of that one of these nights coming up. He’s had to dispose of big hornets’ nests before. He’ll go out after dark after the hornets have all returned to the nest. They’ll be sleeping. Then, he’ll spray some insecticide into the hole. He’ll wear protective clothing, of course. He was going to do it last night, but then realized he didn’t have enough insecticide. He’ll have to get some more. There’s no real hurry. We probably visit the pump house less than once per year. So there’s that. There’s always something, isn’t there? 

It makes me think of a time decades ago when I was taking a college level chemistry class and associated lab. There was a guy in my class…not too bright, but very funny. One day in lab, we all heard the umistakable sound of someone’s crucible breaking, and all the results of their experiment being lost in the process. From the back of the room, this guy I’m talking about said, “Better you than me, Man.” It struck me so funny at the time, and I’ve never forgotten it. So, all of that to say that when it comes to the hornets…better him than me.

Okay, my friends. On that happy note, I’m going to get on with my day and let you get on with yours. It’s Moanday. If you’re a working person, you have my sympathy…and better you than me.

A Little More Sewing

Good morning, my friends. A little more was accomplished here at the Three Cats Ranch yesterday. Have you noticed how there haven't been any pictures of cats lately? I blame them for the lack of progress on things. They've been outside a lot with this nice weather. Clearly, they have not developed a reliable work ethic. Oh well. We soldier on, don't we?

My first stop was in the kitchen to bake some zucchini bread to take to our neighbors. There are almost as many zucchini bread recipes in my collection as I have zucchini. Think of them as armaments. In this case, I used this recipe that originally appeared in Cooking Light magazine in April of 1996. It pains me to be using a recipe I found 30 years ago, but there you go. I was so much younger then...like 30+ years. Yikes. It’s a miracle I’m still alive, isn’t it?

Alright, and with so many recipes, how does one decide? Well, I decided on this one because it uses *two* cups of shredded zucchini, instead of the one cup required by most other recipes. Also, it uses 3/4 of a cup of applesauce. Usually, I’m stocked with homemade applesauce, but recently, I had to buy some for a recipe. The only container I could find was HUGE. So, I’ve had this enormous jug of applesauce taking of space in my refrigerator for a while. Making the bread from this recipe was a no-brainer. Zucchini and applesauce. And if you missed it, I linked to the recipe in the paragraph above this one.

The bread took some time. It had a long baking time, and then I had to wait 10 minutes before I could remove it from the pan. Still, everyone has to do their part, and I figured gifting the neighbor with bread was better than foisting off a bag full of zuchini, right? But don’t give me ideas.

When the bread was safe to be left on its own, I headed out to the garden. There, I took the picture I mentioned yesterday. These are the giant sunflowers, shown in their full height. Impressive, no?

Also, I discovered this newbie to the bee garden. My phone tells me this is Baby Blue Eyes.

This next one is flax. It’s been hard to get a good picture of this since it’s so bright it blows out the saturation in the images I’ve taken in the past.

Okay, the hummingbird feeders were empty again. After I finished up in the garden and took care of the hummers, I was able to get back to quilting the Girls’ Getaway. All the large embroidered blocks in the center are finished now. I outlined much of the embroidery…enough to make the quilting functional, and then I quilted the same meandering feathers to fill in the background.

Today I’m ready to start on the pieced blocks. I’ll aim to quilt a side each day until it’s finished. I left it needle-down in the middle of the bottom border row.

The only other “sewing” I did was mainly dinking around on the computer. Considering what to do with the Cozy Quilt stitchery, I had an idea to make it the center of some other quilt block. 

My first thought was to make it like one of the inverted star blocks, but I needed a center that was at least 5-1/2 inches. The inverted star centers are just 4-1/2 inches. And, yes, I could have done the math, but when you're old enough to be making bread recipes that were published more than 30 years ago, you're obviously too old to do math. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

So...anyway...I went in search of something that would work, and I came upon this tutorial for a Sawtooth Star. I'll need to decide on what fabrics I want to use still, but having a plan is the first step.

The plan for today will look a lot like yesterday, sans hoeing the garden. Baking more bread is on the agenda. I’m going to bake the same bread from yesterday, but in three mini loaves, instead of one large loaf. Matthew and I are getting together for a walk tomorrow, and I want to give him something to take home with him. (I really love spoiling my little boy who was age 42 on his last birthday.) Since it’s just him eating it, three mini loaves will be better. He can freeze two and then eat them whenever he’s in the mood. Also, and like the neighbors, it’s better than handing him a bag full of zucchini. No one visits here without taking some zucchini with them when they go.

The flowers need watering, but mainly, I’ll focus on sewing. I’m hoping to finish off one side of the pieced blocks on the Girls’ Getaway quilt. And then I’ll get a start on the Cozy Quilt project. Also, as I mentioned, I’m baking bread. There’s one other housekeeping chore on the day’s calendar, but it should be a mostly sewing day.

How is your Sunday going? It’ll be pretty relaxed around here. I hope you have a relaxing day planned for yourself too.

No Sewing Day

Good morning, my friends. It was an unplanned day of no sewing. There was time for sewing, but I think I just needed a day off from it. Every time I thought about walking to the machine, I didn’t. I'll get back to it today. The only sewing I did yesterday was to make a little more progress on the cat for the Pieces of the Heart project.

We had grocery shopping to do. We also stopped off at the local feed store where they had whiskey barrel planters on sale. When we first moved to the Three Cats Ranch, I purchased five actual whiskey barrels to use as planters. (They might have been wine barrels.) Nearly 25 years on, they’ve fairly well rotted away. We replaced two of them a few years ago. The remaining three need to be replaced. The cherry tomato is planted in one, and so we’ll wait until its season is over. The other two can be replaced now. While we were there, we saw the biggest hibiscus I've ever seen!

I really wanted to buy it and bring it home, but I couldn't think of a good place to plant it. It would need full sun, and can it survive the winters here? Would the deer eat it? When I thought of the deer, I walked away. (Sigh.) Now I'm wishing we'd brought it home. It had another five flowers coming. Even if it lived its whole life inside our house, I would have gotten the $15's price worth of enjoyment from it. 

After lunch and naps, I had in mind to bake some Blueberry Zucchini Bread. It was a new recipe to me. We’re pausing with our morning granola cups for the time being, which meant I had some blueberries left over that I wanted to use. Also…zucchini. Honestly, the zucchini is starting to scare me. It’s filling about 3/4 of my vegetable crisper now. I have a lot of it included in dishes for the coming week’s menu, but there’s still an overabundance. In any case, I decided to try this new recipe. When it came from the oven, it looked like this:

We had to wait at least an hour to cut into it. In the meantime, I went to check on the garden. The plums are beginning to turn purple. This is the time of year when I start gnashing my teeth about the plums. Generally, we take a trip in the fall, and this year is no different. We planned our departure date a week later than usual to accommodate the plums, but it looks like they’ll be ready in plenty of time. They’re still rock hard, but I suspect they’ll be ready in about a week.

The giant sunflowers have bloomed. I was thinking I need to back up and take a picture of the whole plant to really bring home how tall they are. Just know our fence is eight feet, and they’re well above the top of the fence.

The corn is getting some size to it. It’ll probably be another week to ten days before it’s ready.

The green beans are getting some size too. They still have a ways to go, but things have a way of growing to their full size overnight.

I was happy to find four more pickling cucumbers. Two of them had almost grown too large. I check them every day, and still, some of them are able to hide from me. I need four pounds for a batch of pickles, and oooooh…I just need a couple more. There are plenty more coming, so there’s nothing to worry about. It’s time to go hunting for some dill heads.

Later in the afternoon, we cut into the bread. It’s made with whole wheat pastry flour, and so it has a nice soft texture. It only used one zucchini. Some time ago, I learned the trick of tossing the blueberries in a little flour to keep them from sinking to the bottom of the batter. These did anyway, but it doesn’t really matter. And the bread was good. I just wish it used more zucchini.

So that was a day of not much accomplished, but at least we won’t go hungry. I’ll get back to my sewing today. The only thing on today’s agenda is to hoe the garden. Our neighbor invited us down for dinner tonight, which will be nice. I’m going to bake some more zucchini bread to take along. Everyone has to do their part, right? And as long as I’m doing that, I might take some time to shred some of the excess. I like to divide it into two-cup portions and bake some sort of zucchini bread or zucchini muffins whenever the mood strikes. 

All right then. I’m off to do my slow-stitching. Faster stitching to follow.

A Start and a Finish

Good morning, my friends. It was another mostly sewing day. We'll make up for all that sewing time today. It's a grocery shopping day, and we have a couple of other errands to run as well. Nevertheless, having a few days to focus on sewing has felt like a little mini vacation.

The morning started with the first stitches on Pieces of the Heart. This is going to stitch up pretty fast, I think.

After that, I checked on the garden. Several more zucchini were harvested. The zucchini is piling up again. I have several meals planned for the week that will use some of it, but not enough. Back inside, there was one short housekeeping chore on the agenda, but then I was able to pick up again with the quilting.

Starting with the nine-patch block, I gave it some terry twists. As long as I’m doing feathers in the block backgrounds, that seemed as good a choice as any for those two sections on the right.

From there, I moved to the right and quilted the bathtub block. For this, I outlined most of the embroidery, and then filled in with a meandering feather in the backround.

There was an embroidered border at the bottom, and I did some loop de loop stuff there. There’s another border like this at the top of the quilt. I’ll do the same thing there.

As a reminder, this is that the whole quilt looks like. 

Today I’ll start quilting the large camper block at the top half of the quilt. It’ll be done pretty much the way the other blocks have been done. Also, I’ll quilt that embroidered border at the top. From there, I’ll have the pieced blocks and the blue borders to quilt. Probably, I’ll do this one side per day, and I’ll also quilt the adjacent blue border. If I can keep up that pace, I should have this ready for binding within the week.

So, I’ve left it needle-down at the braided rug there, and I’ll start on this after lunch today.

And I’m happy to say that the Lemurs are finished. It took a while, but I finished off all the thread-painting.

Then I added the quilt back and did some light quilting in the background. Behind the lemurs, I quilted a fern on either side. 

At the left side and the bottom, I quilted a leafy vine.

Then, I machine sewed the binding. 

From there, I thought I’d stop for the day, but I hand-sewed the binding while we watched the news, and the Lemurs are finished.

For comparison, here is the original photograph:

Here’s how they look from the back. It ends up at 24 x 17 inches.

And that was a good way to end the day. 

With the Lemurs finished, I’ll be moving to the next section on my white board which is to sew together a large quilt top. The only thing listed there are the blocks for A Year in the Garden.

Since I only just finished December’s block, I’m not sure I’m ready to start on that just yet. Instead, I’ll probably choose one of the smaller quilts to finish off. I believe the next one on the list is the “Cozy Quilt” project. 

It was one of the “short” embroidery projects I finished up a couple of months ago. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it, but I have some pretty fabrics to choose from. 

All right then. We have many miles to travel between now and whatever time I’ll have for sewing this afternoon. It’s probably time to be on my way.

A Good Day of Sewing

Good morning, my friends. It was nice to have a day mostly devoted to sewing yesterday. There was progress on several fronts. For one thing, I finished up the 12th of 12 blocks for A Year in the Garden.

Here are all the blocks I have for this quilt.

When I made my way to the sewing room later in the day, I matched it up with these fabrics from my stash. I have in mind to use the bright floral for the border and sashings. I'll use the yellow for cornerstones. If there's enough fabric, I might decide to add a border around each block. Possibly, I'll add in a green as well.

My next stop was to check on the garden. I harvested two more pickling cucumbers, four regular-sized zucchinis and 7 babies. There's a recipe I like that uses the babies. I'll say more about that when I get ready to make it. For now...feast your eyes on our overabundance of cherry tomatoes.

You might remember when I was whining about how there were no tomatoes on this large plant. Since then, the plant has grown to gargantuan proportions, and it is covered in tomatoes. I've dusted off my recipes that use cherry tomatoes, and those will be on next week's menu.

This cluster of zinnias continues to delight me. It seems each time I see it, it has added another new color.

And I love how these are sort of a flower within a flower.

This is another sunflower from the package labeled "Infrared Mix." It has produced all different colors, with the red center common to all of them.

This one is called Sunburst Panache. It's one of the taller ones.

And the giants are starting to open. I'm hoping they'll be fully open when I check on them today.

Back inside, I went to work on the quilting for the Girls' Getaway project. I finished filling in the background on the bicycle block.

And then I quilted the tent block in much the same way. Some of the embroidery was outlined, and then I filled in the background with a meandering feather.

Here's a peek at the back.

From there, I really wanted to give the Lemurs plenty of time, and so I stopped. I left it needle down at the 9-patch. Today I'll stitch this with some terry twists, and then move on to the embroidered bathtub block to its right.

As for the Lemurs, I have just two colors left to stitch...the darker tan and the white. I'm hoping to finish the thread painting today.

When I stopped for the day, I had the machine threaded with the darker tan thread, and I left it needle down.

There are just a few things on today's agenda...the usual garden check-in and a couple of easy household chores. We'll need to do our grocery shopping tomorrow, and so I'll need to finalize our menu for next week and make up a grocery list. Next week's menu will feature lots of zucchini and lots of cherry tomatoes. Mainly, it'll be another sewing day. Happily, we have leftovers for tonight's dinner.

Okay then. Sewing ahead. I'm hoping to have the Lemurs finished and ready for quilting by day's end.