8/26/20

Chickening Out

Well, if the day had been any busier yesterday, I'm afraid I might have been done in. Today will be much the same. Thursday I'll get a pedicure, which will be salve for the soul. 

It started out easy enough. We hung the Summer Holiday quilt on the 2nd floor of the Mewseum. That makes three quilts on the second floor collection.


The quilt on the far wall isn't a cat quilt, but oh well. Mike likes it, and so it stays. It's this Happy Village quilt I made some time ago. No doubt there are feral cats wandering around there, don't you think?


So once we had that hung up, I did some slow stitching on the "I Believe in Snowmen" piece. That one will be finished by this morning, and so I made up the final block for the Snowflakes quilt. This one will be stitched in blue and metallic gold. There will be a little blue bead everywhere you see a black dot.


And that's when the trouble started. I went through a bucket of apples to produce 12 pints of applesauce. I'll do this all again today with the apples I have left. 


I have more apples than I need, and so we'll give the rest to our neighbor. His horse and mule will appreciate them.

After that, I made some coleslaw for dinner. I had bunches of cabbage in my crisper in red, green, and Napa varieties. It was a good way to use it. I don't have a picture, but I can highly recommend this Asian Coleslaw recipe. It's a lot of chopping if you do it by hand, but a food processor will do it in no time at all. Also, I buy the julienned carrots at the grocery store. It's truly the greatest thing since sliced bread.

And then, I figured I needed to stand on my feet a little longer, so I made this cherry pie for two. The filling is from the cherries I canned last month. 


This is a Pillsbury pie crust. If you've ever worked with them, then you know they come two to a box, one for the top and one for the bottom. With pies for two, I only need one crust, but it's always a question how to make the top crust...and then what to do with the scraps leftover from the bottom. So I'm trying to get a little fancier using them. And sheesh...quilters know their way around scraps, don't they? So that's my laughable pie art. Kind of fun.

And then, I really was done standing for the day, so I sat and finished stitching the binding for Chicken Buffet. I started this quilt on February 27, 2015, and it was my second-oldest WIP. (The oldest is still Mulligan Stew.)


I started this quilt as a part of Sharon V.'s "Let's Book It" challenge, where we were challenged to make something from one of the books languishing on our sewing room book shelves. I think I'd had the book pattern for this quilt for about five years at that point. Here, you can see the chicken wire quilting that surrounds each block.


And here, you can see my chicken foot "feather" in the border. You can also see the big chicken foot in the cornerstones.


The back fabric was a gift from Sharon. I was trying to recall our conversation to Mike yesterday. I think we were talking about a different fabric, and Sharon allowed as how she had this one she didn't think she'd use. And I said something like, "I have the PERFECT pattern for that fabric." And, thus, the Chicken Buffet WIP was born. And, thank you, Sharon.


Can a quilt really be finished without first being kitty tested and appurroved? I don't think so. Smitty likes this quilt.

Okay, so it's back to the applesauce for me today. I need to harvest more beans too. I'll do that first before the sun gets too high in the sky. And there are a lot of other little things on my list for the day. Canning season keeps me hopping. I didn't think I'd be doing much canning this year because we don't have a CSA share to deal with. Silly me. I'm way over 100 lids used so far this season with more to come.

So there's no time like the present. It's time to get going on the day. 

11 comments:

QUILTING IS BLISSFUL, DI said...

I remember making my share of homemade applesauce growing up--but ours was pink in color cause we left the skins on and cooked them down that way and we put them in a funnel shaped container and used a wooden spindle like thing to separate the sauce from the skins--!!!!
the quilts are looking great--
luv, di

Julierose said...

I like the Happy Village quilt--so unique...lots of little pieces in that one...
Have fun putting your produce up...hugs, Julierose

Lyndsey said...

The quilt is beautiful and the backing fabric just perfect. I'd forgotten Sharon's Let's book it link. It made me use several patterns from books and was fun finding out what books other people had. Your pie looks delicious and it has reminded me I must get to the kitchen as I'm making a savoury pie for dinner.

Debbiegsp said...

I think this quilt is the cutest, funniest quilt I have ever seen. And I love the way you quilted it. You are so creative! BTW, beautiful applesauce!

Quilting Babcia said...

Can one even find canning lids this season? Our local Walmart only has generic ones, and I'll be darned if I'm going to spend hours prepping and canning and then trust everything to a generic brand lid. Won't pay the outrageous prices on Amazon either. I'll can salsa (if the tomatoes ever ripen) until we run out of lids and that'll be it for this year. We'll just eat tomato-basil pie til the tomatoes run out - what a way to go! Smitty does seem to be enchanted by the thought of all those tasty chicken he hopes are in his future. Great finish!

Magpie's Mumblings said...

Chicken Buffet is adorable! What a fun quilt - but so is the village one. Nice to have a perfect spot to display them. And all that applesauce - wow.

Vroomans' Quilts said...

I made tomato sauce today - but freezing it. HAHAHA - I forgot about that very odd chicken fabric! Glad to see it got some proper use and such a fun quilt.

Beauty Write For Us said...

Hi! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say I genuinely enjoy reading your blog posts. Can you recommend any other blogs that go over the same topics? Thanks a ton!

Joan G said...

Love love love Chicken Buffet! Your talent never ceases to amaze me!

piecefulwendy said...

Fun to see Happy Village once again, and I like how bright and lively the chicken quilt looks altogether. What fun! Around here, there is a shortage of can lids - so many are trying canning for the first time or taking it up again.

Kate said...

You've been really busy, it's amazing you still have feet to stand on! Love the chicken quilt! The quilting is as much fun as the blocks and that backing fabric is perfect! Congrats on all the progress, both on taming the garden stuff and on moving some projects along.