August FMQ Challenge

The month-end madness has set in where I'm trying to get all my monthly projects done...not that anyone's paying any attention aside from me.  It just makes me feel important if I think I'm under the gun somehow.  Force of habit from my working days, I guess.

August's Free Motion Quilting Challenge was created by Wendy Sheppard whose tutorial showed us how to make a motif resembling the hat a court jester would wear.  I'm not sure if I did it just the way I was supposed to, but it's a fairly good likeness.  

For me, the most challenging part of free motion quilting is not painting myself into a corner.  I sometimes end up in some little space with no way out except to sort of squeeeeeeze by somehow.  Either that or I end up making a point where I intended to make a curve.  It's always good practice trying these challenges each month, though, and this one was no different.  Thank you, Wendy, for a great challenge.  I can see using this motif in my future projects.

When I had that finished, I made the August block for the Block Lotto.  This month's block was a Jacob's Ladder done in cream and cool colors.

And I didn't have enough time to start another project today, and so I decided to finish making the label for the Daisies & Dots quilt.  I'm just about to round the fourth corner on the binding, and so I'll be ready to sew the label on soon.  Then it will be off to my cousin who lives in Austin, TX.  Even when we were kids, we never lived close.  Nevertheless, we saw one another relatively often, given the distance between us.  I haven't seen her in years, but I hope to get to Austin one of these days for a face-to-face reunion.  

I made this label using Printed Treasures.  And while I'm talking about this, does anybody else have trouble peeling the back paper off once you've printed the label?  I've doused the thing in lighter fluid to get it off, and then rinsed it out and pressed it dry.  It works, but I wonder why the paper is so effing hard to get off!

Can you guess what I'll be doing tomorrow?  I misspoke when I last wrote that I needed 16 pounds for my small batch of pasta sauce.  Actually, I only need 8 pounds, which is what you see here.  That will make 3-4 quarts of sauce.

And there are still more coming, my friends.  Many more.  It's the stuff nightmares are made of.

I'm hoping to get in at least one more batch before we leave on our trip.  Have I told you where we're going yet?  We're going first to Glacier National Park in Montana, then to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.  We've been both places before, but only to drive through.  This time, we have three weeks, and so we're going to spend a few days in each place hiking and seeing the sights.  After that, we'll head back home via Stanley Basin, Idaho, and then to the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in Eastern Oregon if we have time.  Although we've lived in Oregon since 1978, we haven't spent very much time in the southeastern part of the state.  It's high time, I would say.  We always have so much fun when we travel in our RV, and so both of us are looking forward to it.

My Monday was pretty easy and relaxing.  I didn't have to go anywhere, and so I puttered around most of the morning.  How was your day?