The Trouble with Kitties

After my morning session of slow-stitching, it was time to gird up my loins to pick yet more cherries. The kitties were supposed to help with this, but what do you suppose they did? Well, Smitty spent all his time feasting on the long blades of grass. He likes the fat, juicy blades best.

He wanted me to remind you that we live in a legal state, so it's all good. Sadie went off to find fame and fortune in the mouse market. 

We picked 8-1/2 pounds of cherries, although I needed 10 pounds. We were kind of dismayed to find the cherries had gone kind of wormy. We had to pick and choose from the tree, discarding the soft ones. I'd wanted to take a break from pitting cherries, but felt I needed to get busy on them right away. I halved and pitted all the cherries, and evicted any freeloaders using the tip of my knife. (It's a miniaturized version of what I do with apples in the fall...eviction, I mean.) It took several hours, but now all the cherries are halved and pitted and ready to use. As long as I'd gone that far, I went ahead and made up some Black Forest Preserves with Amaretto. This is divine on ice cream.

Mike needed to go into town for a haircut, and so I asked him to pick up another 1-1/2 pounds of cherries to supplement what we picked from the tree. Also, we couldn't find raspberries on our neighbor's vine, and so I asked him to pick up some for raspberry-infused vodka. 

This can be made with almost any kind of fruit. I've done it with the cut-off sides from strawberries, and I've done it with cranberries. It should be a fruit with a thin skin, or else you can cut it up. So, you take a couple of pints of fruit and put it in a jar, pour a fifth of vodka over, leave it at room temperature for 36 hours, then strain the fruit from it, and funnel it back into its original bottle. Store in the refrigerator, and use it for any drink that uses vodka. Raspberry-infused Lemon Drops are especially tasty.

Finally, toward the end of the day, I had a little time left to sew another border onto "And On that Farm." I had so much trouble with the applique yesterday! The section with the kitty practically came apart, as if it hadn't ever been fused. I don't know what caused this...it's almost as if I had a bad section of fusible when I made this block. Whatever the cause, I spent at least an hour of my time refusing tiny little pieces. You can see what I'm talking about in the image below. Notice also that the orange beak of the chick on the left is completely missing. Fortunately, I found it on the floor and was able to reattach it.

For the smallest pieces, I used this product, which was only moderately successful.

It's good in a pinch, but difficult to use. The picture below is meant to show you how there is significant overspray, and the spray itself causes the little pieces to blow away. I used a plastic stylus to hold things down while I sprayed the fusible. It only works if the piece is completely detached. Obviously, I can't get anywhere near the quilt when I'm using it.

For the larger pieces, I decided to try using fusible again, and so I dug around in my fusible scraps looking for smaller pieces. I could put a bit beneath a piece and fuse it with a hot iron...

Then, I peeled back the piece to remove the paper...

Exposing the sticky stuff, which could then be fused down. Eventually, all these pieces will be top-stitched around the edges, and so the fusible is only intended to keep things from falling off. It doesn't have to go all the way to the edge of the piece.

Okay, and so it took much longer than anticipated, but I finished sewing on the second border, and I had plenty of that fabric. One of my borders has two seams in order to make it reach.

From there, I could add a few of the applique pieces that have been on hold until the quilt was sewn together. I could finish fusing down the stem of this sunflower. It was kind of in the way, and I was sure I would sew it into a seam eventually.

Also, I could add the carrots below the kitten block.

I don't like carrots, but I would like my suppurr, please.

Okay, so I still have one more border to add, and then yet more applique. Still a ways to go with the farm, but it was time to stop for the day. After dinner might be Smitty's favorite time of the day. You can always find him sunning himself on his catio and watching the critters from a distance.

So there are still two more items on my list of cherry foods. Today I'll be making Sweet Cherry Barbecue Sauce. With the cherries already halved and pitted, the canning part of my day should be much simpler and less time-consuming. A few of you have mentioned cherry pitters, and so I wanted to mention how I do it. I have a nifty pitting contraption that makes it easier than doing them one at a time. Here's what it looks like:

I like it enough that I wrote a whole blog post about it. You can see how it works there. Having used it for quite a few pitting sessions, I'll say that you have to watch as you go. Sometimes two cherries will fall into the bowl, but only one has been pitted. And so I watch it pretty carefully to make sure I only get one cherry at a time.

And all of that to say I'm signing off to do more cherry stuff. Keeping my fingers crossed that I can finish off the borders today.