Needle Down

We picked up another 40 lbs. of Romas from our farmers yesterday.

By the time we got home, it was already 11:00 a.m. We had a grilled marinated vegetable sandwich for dinner last night, and I still needed to get the vegetables into the marinade...then there was lunch...and when everything was said and done, I didn't want to start on the tomatoes so late in the day. To be honest, I just wasn't mentally prepared for another whole day of tomatoes. Instead, I made it a sewing day...unplanned...and so it felt downright luxurious.

There was just a little bit left to stitch on the Shop Hop quilt names and places, and so I finished that up.

And then I was fresh out of hand stitching, and so I made up the 9th of 12 blocks for the Snow Globes quilt. This one is called simply, "Cottage."

The Snow Globes blocks stitch up pretty quick, and I'm going to want something for our camping trip next week. As long as I had a lightbox set up, I decided to trace out the 5th of 9 blocks for Friendship's Garden. This one is called "Happy is the House."

And then, it seemed like a good time to get started on the quilting for the Welcome Home mystery mini. My first job was to choose a thread for the top. There are a lot of colors in this quilt, and really, no main color.

This Coats & Clark variegated "Star" thread seemed like it had all of the colors in the quilt, and so I chose that. (I wish Coats & Clark was still making this thread. The colors were so pretty.)

For the bobbin thread, a simple gold seemed like the best choice.

As I've mentioned before, this isn't my favorite quilt. It's going to be a kitty quilt, and so I felt some liberty to practice and experiment with the quilting. For the center block, I couldn't think of anything other than a straight-line grid, and so I started on that. There must be some quilter's math involved in getting the lines evenly spaced and situated, but I don't know it. Besides...I'm too old for math. So it wasn't working out. The lines weren't ending up where I wanted them and the placement was asymmetrical. Finally, I decided that symmetry was overrated, and decided to leave them asymmetrical. I kept adding lines until there was some symmetry to the asymmetry, and then moved on to the first border. There, I did a motif Lori Kennedy calls "The Twist." Her page has some variations on this motif as well, but I stuck with the basic.

It's always hard to know how to turn a corner, and so I just kind of squared it off. It isn't pretty, but it's for the kitty. (Did you read the poetry there?)

Here's how it was looking up to that point.

Smitty came in and rubbed the sewing machine in appurroval. Thanks, Buddy.

Then I moved to the next row of blocks...more straight lines...and then a sort of swoopty-doo pattern in the next border. (Technical quilting terms, so pay attention.)

And again...how do I turn that corner? It isn't pretty, but then...okay, I think we've been over this already. It's for the kitty.

And here's how it looked when I quit for the day.

Here's how it's looking from the back.

Except, I wasn't quite finished for the day. There's something OCD in me that likes to leave my quilting projects needle-down on the machine. So I took two more swipes at the outermost row of blocks and then called it quits. Needle down. I think I leave them this way so the kitties can sleep on them and they won't slide off the table.

It was a good day for mail yesterday. My Teal Mug Rug arrived from my partner, Lana. Look at how cute this is! Lana made up the pattern. It's paper-pieced. Also included, a little notepad and lavender sachet.

All those kitty fabrics are so cute!

Here's how it looks from the back.

Great job on this, Lana. I love it, and thank you so much. It was great fun being partners with another cat lover!

Also...a thread collection I ordered from Mass Drop. If you haven't heard of Mass Drop, it describes itself as "community-driven commerce." They get purchases in bulk and then offer them to members at reduced prices. Sometimes there are different colorways or different combinations of the same item. Be careful...it's a little like Amazon Prime...easy to spend more money than you intended. I've curbed my enthusiasm from when I first joined and was ordering too many fat quarter collections. (Honestly, at some point, you have more fabric than you can reasonably use in two lifetimes.) So anyway...yesterday's delivery was this variegated thread collection. There were different colorways, but I chose this one.

On the back of the box...

I couldn't agree more.

Here's a better picture of the threads in this collection. Pretty, huh?

I could eat them up like a bag of M&M's.

So that was my day yesterday. Today I'll get at those tomatoes. My goal is to make another batch of pasta sauce and one of salsa, and then I'll see where I end up. I'll be doing it all again tomorrow, but how much will depend on how many tomatoes are left. That will bring an end to canning season, but I'll still be doing raw packs of plain old tomatoes from our own plants. It would be more accurate to say that this will put an end to cooking, stirring, watching, and waiting. Raw packs are easy and fast.

It's time to get moving. The sauce won't make itself.