Farms and Barns

It looks as if the winter gloom has settled over us here west of the Cascades. It's been gray, rainy, and overcast for several days running. We're expecting a brief clearing this weekend, which is nice because our CSA farmers have scheduled their open Farm Day on Saturday. I missed it last year when I took a quilting class on the same day. This year, I'm looking forward to treading deeper into the interior of the farm.

Yesterday's rainy day tasks included doing seven loads of laundry, but it's done! And that left me plenty of time to work on the farm. When I left off on Sunday, I'd built Barn O, but I still needed to work on its background pieces.

That was pretty simple since it meant making fields from several different fabrics. I fused the barn and the fields and then laid them against the rest of the farm.

From there I needed to make a tree, a sheep, and a fence. If you're wondering about placement on these, here's how it's done. The pattern includes a placement diagram. (Yes, as a matter of fact, the ink on the pattern did smear during production. I'll avoid getting off on a rant here about the expense and cheapness of McKenna Ryan patterns. Wait...was that a rant?)

It has to be done in pieces, however. In this case, I completed and fused all the fields, but then needed to remove the fabric piece in order to see the template for the tree and sheep. For this project a teflon pressing sheet is essential. This is the one I have. As I searched for that link, I realized there are larger ones. Usually this one is big enough, but sometimes I wish it were a little larger.

You can slip the placement pattern under the pressing sheet, and it shows through pretty well. (I've bumped up the contrast a little in this image so that you can see it.)

When you have your pieces cut out, you can start laying them out. I use just the tip of my iron to stick them in place so that they don't slide around.

When you have the whole piece constructed, 

you can peel it off the pressing sheet and the fusible remains in place. (The fusible remains usable. Somebody had to say it.)

Then you can move it over onto its final resting place, 

and if you're feeling confident, fuse it into place. Don't forget to move the whole piece back to the teflon sheet or you'll be fusing everything to whatever surface you're using. Here's where I left it yesterday.

Today I'll be building the largest of the barns in the lower left corner. This one has a cat!

It's moving along. I probably have a few more days of work left on this before it's finished. So far, so good.

Also today, I want to get a few things done in the kitchen today. I have a small amount of frozen pumpkin puree from last year's CSA that I want to bake into some pumpkin muffins. There were a few little things in yesterday's share I'd like to deal with too. The red bell peppers are piling up, and so I want to make some red pepper jelly. Can't do that until I pick up some pectin, however. At some point, I need to make another quick trip to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things I need. While I'm there, I'll get my flu shot. A read an article that said the flu was bad this year. (Don't "they" always say that? Every year?) So I don't know if I'll get that done today or not. Tomorrow, for sure.

ICYMI: There's a giveaway going on, along with the launch of a stitch-along. Don't miss out. Giveaway ends on Friday. Click right here to enter.