Bold Bullions

Yesterday I was minding my own business, stitching away on the Pumpkin Pie stitchery, and that bullion stitch just kept after me.

"Neh, neh, neh...you'll never finish this piece. Neh, neh, neh. You'll do something easy like a Lazy Daisy or something. Neh, neh, neh."

Finally, I could take it no more, and so I took the whole piece out of the hoop and returned to the video Meg Hawkey posted on YouTube. When I linked to this a while back, I gave you the wrong link. I misunderstood and thought the videos could be found on the Crabapple Hill Studio website. In fact, Meg has a YouTube channel where she's posted some excellent videos on some of these scary stitches. Here's the video for the Bullion Stitch. If you can't see the video, then click right here.

Since I had the absolute pleasure of having Meg sit right next to me in class and show me how to do the stitch, watching the video was like having her right beside me again. I stopped and started the video as I needed to, and then I completed my first circle of bullion stitches. Ta-Da!

And since I've been whining about this stitch for a solid year, I'm feeling pretty darned self-satisfied at having jumped that hurdle. But I wasn't finished. I needed to make another circle around the ones I'd already done...thus:

And then I needed to fill in the center with French knots. And there you have it...one complete flower.

(Polishes fingernails on shirt.)

There wasn't much left to stitch after that, but I wanted to get on with my salsa canning. My first stop was the greenhouse to harvest whatever tomatoes needed harvesting. I picked another 2 1/2 pounds.

And there are more...oh yes...there are more.

So the salsa recipe was enticing because it only required 2 lbs. of tomatoes, not to mention just being "salsa," for which we are seriously Jonesing. Last year's salsa was used up months ago. By now, we're barely hanging on to life by a thread, so great is our need for salsa.

In desperation, I tried this recipe from Marisa McClellan's book, "Preserving by the Pint." It only requires 2 lbs. of tomatoes, and I already had those even without yesterday's harvest. The salsa is barely cooked at all, and then funneled into jars for processing. When all was said and done, I had 5 half pints plus a little bonus for the cook. The bonus went straight into the refrigerator to cool.

The first thing you might notice about this is that the salsa is floating above some watery liquid in the bottom. When I shake it up, it mixes better, but it looks less-than-appetizing like you see it here. The tomatoes are barely cooked, as I said, and so the salsa behaves like jars of raw-packed tomatoes. The look is okay for plain tomatoes, but not so great for salsa. Nevertheless, desperate salsa times call for desperate measures and so we tasted the bonus jar when it was cool enough. It was underwhelming. It needed more vinegar and something else. This morning I tried adding some Tabasco and a little bit of flavored vinegar, and that improved the flavor significantly. Having determined that, I might give this another try, but I'm not prepared to share a recipe with you yet.

While the salsa was processing, I finished off the last of the Pumpkin Pie piece.

It's okay if you look at the flower some more. You can stroke it if you like. Certainly, I have. After I took it downstairs, I pulled some fabrics I'd like to use to make my little wall hanging. I don't know if I'll use any or all or none of these fabrics. For now, they're laid out beside the piece and I'll circle them for a bit while I decide what to do next.

As for yesterday's "next," I wanted to get started on the August block for Tuxedo's Tales...this one.

So, I picked out my fabrics and applied fusible to all the pieces.

Then I fused them to the background and drew in the stitching lines.

That was as far as I got, but I'll get the stitching finished today.

First, I'll get started stitching the next quilt shop names and cities for Row 5 of the Shop Hop quilt.

And since I still haven't unpacked the trailer, I need to do that too. There are a few small housekeeping chores to catch up on, but there should be plenty of sewing time today.

Our weather has turned much cooler and Fall-like. Have things cooled off where you live too?

Oh yes, and I almost forgot! Quilting Snowladies was a first place winner at the Oregon State Fair.

Quiltmaker's Garden was a second place winner.

So, I'm pretty happy about that. Sue and I will be heading to the fair this Thursday, and I'll see the rest of the quilts then.