A Finish

Yesterday I had time to finish up the Aspen Tree quilt. This began as a project for the "Let's Book It" Challenge in June of 2014. The pattern is from this book by Jean Wells:

There are lots of pretty projects in this book, and I might like to try some of the other ones. For now, I have this one completed:

When I left off on Tuesday, I had quilted all of the leaves on the tree. Almost every one required that I cut thread, although there were a few couplets that I could quilt as one piece. That took forever. Then I had quilted across the bottom border and up the left side. You can see the quilting for those areas right here. 

Yesterday I continued across the top and down the left side. It's a little hard to see, and so I've bumped up the contrast and turned down the brightness in these next images.

After I had the binding sewn on, I laid it down in the natural light of the living room and was able to get a passable picture of the back. 

And there it is...another one for the books.

This morning I created a label for it. I still need to print it and then attach it to the quilt.

Also yesterday I did laundry and housework and started my tomato seeds. This year I'm only planting sauce tomatoes. We've purchased a CSA (community supported agriculture) share from a local farm called Working Hands Farm. I've been following the workings of Farmer Brian and Farmer Jess for the past year and a half. They were just married last year. If you're on Facebook, you can do yourself a favor by "liking" their page for some beautiful photography. It's also just plain fun to watch what's going on at their farm. Right now, they have piglets just a couple of weeks old.

Pardon me for just a second...SQUEE! (Ahem.)

And just look at this beautiful CSA share from last year:

We signed up last year, but then thought we might be traveling, and so we had to back out. And that means I'm extra excited for this year to get started. We are purchasing a weekly box, and so it's going to be quite an adventure in cooking this summer trying to use up all those beautiful fresh fruits and veggies. And all of that to say that I'm expecting to get plenty of tomatoes from them this year, which allows me to focus my efforts on growing tomatoes for sauce, salsa, and chutney.

Today I'm going to see my dermatologist. My skin is paying for my many years of sunworshipping in both Hawaii and Southern California. I suppose the exposure could have been worse if I'd moved to Equador at some point in time. For staying in the good old USA, can it get any worse than Hawaii and Southern Cal? Arizona, maybe, and I lived there too. Hopefully, I can get out without any burning, freezing, or cutting today.

I'm hoping to get some sewing time today. For my next trick, I'm going to turn the Dream Machines into a flimsy.

This one will take me a bit because I'm going to set them with little spool blocks for cornerstones. I haven't made any of those yet, and so that will add up to some hours of effort. I'm ahead of where I wanted to be on my February goals, and so it's looking good for getting this one ready to quilt.

What's on your to-do list for today?