Lemon Yellow Sun

It was my last canning project, at least for now. I spent yesterday morning pitting cherries. When I realized a summer journey next year would mean no canning, I knew I needed more cherries. Yes, more, more, more! If there are cherries next year, they will be for the birds and squirrels. We're hoping for a journey to Alaska. That border with Canada will have to open first, but that's a long ways off. We'll stick in the present for now. 

When I was finished with the cherries, I had four more pints of cherries in syrup, bringing my total to ten pint jars. That oughta hold us.

While those were processing, I got to work squeezing another two bags of lemons. The homemade lemonade didn't last nearly long enough, and so I wanted more of that too. Yes, more, more, more! It must have been my day for more. There were a couple more lemons rolling around in the vegetable crisper. I supplemented my two bags for one pitcher of lemonade, and another 2 cups of juice in the freezer for the next time.

When my kitchen tasks were finished, I headed into the vegetable garden. I needed at least one small zucchini for last night's dinner, and I knew there was one in the garden ready for harvest. As I looked over my plant, I realized the one on my mind had nearly gotten away from me. For good measure, I harvested two more than probably only had about an hour to go before they would grow into two things that could eat Los Angeles.

And, of course, once zucchini starts, it never quits. There are lots of little babies out there. I make a good marinated zucchini salad that uses the smallest of the zucchini. It tastes good, and it keeps the zucchini from ganging up on humanity.

Okay, so I had one housekeeping task to do, and then I could get back to sewing. It was time to get back to work on the Sonora Desert piece. As I was working on this, I knew I had a piece of gold fairy frost fabric in my stash, and I thought the quilt needed a focal point. I had in mind to create an inset circle of sunshine. When I held the gold fairy frost up to the background, it seemed a little dull compared to what I had pictured in my mind's eye.

Fairy frost comes in all colors, and so I went online to see if I could find one that was a little brighter. Fabric.com could sell me a yellow fairy frost, and so I ordered a yard of that. It took about a week to arrive.

I liked how that looked a lot better.

I'm going to use metallic threads to quilt and liven this up, and so I picked through my metallic thread spools and came out with all of these colors. I won't use all of them. I'll just choose as I go.

And then I needed to decide on what size to make the sun. A used wide-mouth mason jar lid was just about right.

Okay...now for the scary part. Sadie was at my side.

Don't worry...I'll purrtect you!

My plan was to make an inset circle. You can see how I do this by reading a tutorial from when I took Dawn White's class several years ago. Although Dawn White taught my class, this is the original technique of Dale Fleming, who wrote this book:

I won't re-invent the wheel, but you can read my old post right here for the details about how this works. It's super simple to do. I first made a freezer paper template and then decided where the circle would be.

Then, sucking in my breath, I cut a hole in the background piece. I've only ever done this on a solid piece of fabric. I wasn't at all sure how this would work with all those seams and threads.

But there it is. Sorry little circle. Your services won't be needed any longer, but you can apply for unemployment.

And then I proceeded with the glueing, sewing, and trimming. I happen to like this Fons & Porter glue stick. It was a little messy with so much fraying and with so many seams, but it worked just fine.

When it was finished and I flipped it over, it looked like this. I wish I'd moved the sun just a tad to the right so that the right edge didn't line up with that seam. It makes the right side look more straight than round, but I believe I'll be able to fix that when I do the quilting. 

So, phew! That was scary. After that, I squared it up and added a narrow stop border.

And then the batik border from my stash. I'm using the same fabric for the quilt back.

When it was sandwiched for quilting, I stopped for the day.

Okay, so the window washer guy is coming today, which means I'm going to stay out of his way by spending the day in my windowless sewing room. The window washer guy has been washing our windows for more than 30 years, and so he practically feels like family. It'll be nice to have clean windows, but even nicer to spend the day sewing. 

It's been a busy couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to a day without any major tasks on my to-do list. And I'm excited to get going on this quilting. I'm hoping the metallic thread won't give me too much trouble, and I know a couple of tricks to make it a little more cooperative. I like this Sonora Desert piece better than I did before adding the sun and the borders, but I still think it needs something to liven it up. The metallics could be just the thing. Time will tell. And, if not, well...it's just fabric. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.