Beary Close to a Finish

Yesterday found me with a long list of to-do's, the most time-consuming of which was to do laundry. Laundry is actually not such a bad job. It's more of an interruption than anything else, but yesterday's pile was impressive. That's what happens when you skip a week for a camping trip. So I had laundry in the background for the whole day. Also, I had two canning projects on my list, but I really, really, really wanted to finish up the quilting on the bear quilt. That was first on my list after breakfast.

Just the borders were left. Since I'd done some traveling to finish off that diagonal grid, I stitched in the ditch on both sides of the blue border to cover my tracks. Then, I stitched a repeating heart motif there. And the outer border was stitched using an upsy-downsy-swirly-curly motif. (Technical quilting terms. Try to keep up. Yeah, I say that every time.)

In the cornerstones, I did a stylized heart. It's always hard for me to figure out how to turn the corners when I'm quilting a border.

And with that, the quilting was finished. I laid it out on the floor to check for any missing lines in the center bear panel. Sometimes my eyes can't see what's right in front of them. Either that, or they see what isn't there.

Flipping it over, here's how it looks from the back. 

By the way, have you noticed that my quilt inspectors have completely abandoned their posts? They threatened to strike if they weren't paid higher kitty treat wages. Hm...must check with the union steward about this.

So, then I turned my attention to the canning. Originally, I thought I would do another batch of cherries in syrup and one of sweet cherry pie filling. Checking my recipe for sweet cherry pie filling (which would have been new to me), I realized it was not so different from my usual recipe that uses tart cherries. In fact, it had even more sugar, which seems counter-intuitive. I decided to stick with the old recipe this time around. That meant I needed more cherries though, and so I ended up using all the cherries for the pie filling. My yield was nine pints. Pint jars are perfect in a pie for two.

So now, I have a total of 13 jars of pie filling including the four left from last year. Also, six jars of cherries in syrup. And that should probably see me though. On today's agenda, I'll be canning the sweet cherry barbecue sauce from the cherries I pitted and froze before we left on our camping trip. Mike is going to pick some more cherries today, and I have a few recipes I'd like to make with them...non-canning recipes. That will probably be the end of the cherries for the season.

With the canning done, I could move on to sewing the binding on the bear quilt. 

Sadie helped with that.

Then, with her help, I managed to turn the first two corners before it was time to quit for the day.

Today was supposed to be a grocery shopping day. Neither of us wanted to go, and so we ate out last night, which allows us to put off grocery shopping for another day. This could get to be a habit. Instead, I'll do the canning, and then, I simply must do some housework. On the sewing front, I have a lot of irons in the fire. I'm going to try to get the rest of the way around that quilt binding so I can put it in tomorrow's mail. The baby isn't getting any younger. 

Also, I'm determined to finish off the farm quilt. All it needs now is embellishing, but I'm dragging my feet on that. There are a lot of little red apples to sew onto the trees, which means hand sewing through some applique. I know it's going to make my thumb hurt. Yesterday I got the idea to use a thimble to push the needle through, and then use a hemostat clamp to pull it through the rest of the way. The hemostat clamp is usually reserved for turning things inside out, but if doctors can use it to hold their needles when they're stitching up skin, I figure it can work for stitching on beads too. And if you're not using a hemostat clamp in your sewing, you're missing out on a great tool. Just sayin'.

Okay...and that will probably keep me busy for the day. As I'm writing this, I'm looking at the poor forgotten Dream Big panel that I said I was going to start quilting way back on June 12th. Well...now that I've looked up that date, I'm impressed that only a full month has gone by. It seems like longer. Anyway...that. I need to do that. And I need to make up the next block (the last) for Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs. Oh...the life of a quilter is never dull.