Second November Finish

It was a cold and rainy day yesterday...a perfect day for sewing. I spent my whole day stitching either by machine or by hand. First, I stitched up the remaining embroidery inside my hoop. Those green leaves are time-consuming.

Then I moved my hoop to the right for the near-final section. There's just a smidge I couldn't fit at the top of the hoop. The large honey bee in this design will all be done in French knots, so it will be fuzzy.

From there, I headed into the sewing room. My goal was to make eight more leaf blocks. I needed to cut all the pieces for the leaves and to mark in the sewing lines. As you can see, I had more help than I could use for this.

When I mentioned some catnip, he smacked his lips. I've learned that a small helping of catnip can clear away a lot of obstacles in the sewing room.

Okay, and this took forever. All the background pieces for the leaves were already cut. I just needed to cut the leaf pieces themselves. There are four pieces for each leaf, and then some marking for sewing triangles.

Finally, I had them all sewn together. It was after noon by then, and I needed to get something started in the slow cooker.

After starting the slow cooker, and eating some lunch, I finished off the "logs" on the maple leaf log cabin blocks, and my goal of eight more was complete. 

It was around 2:30 by then. I think all told, I spent about four hours on these, which would come out to a half hour per block. Keep in mind that the only cutting I did was for the colored portion of the leaf. The rest was already cut. Sheesh. I'm glad there are just eight more, and that will probably take most of today to finish.

When I had them finished, I laid them out around the center panel. I haven't yet decided on the orientation of the leaves. I'll figure that out when they're all finished.

As I've been working, I've been puzzling out in my head how to make all this fit. Yesterday, I had something of an epiphany when I realized that if I have five leaves on each side of the panel, then the panel needs to have borders added to make it square, rather than rectangular. The remaining four leaf blocks will be at the corners. That helped a little, but I still need to figure out how wide to make the borders. 

As for the fabrics I'll use, I think I know just what to do now. Below is a terrible picture of my idea, but I believe it will work. 

See the leaf fabric in the upper left? It's some I purchased while we were traveling. It might have even been purchased with this quilt in mind. I can add a wider border of that fabric, and then a narrower dark brown border after that. If I do my math correctly, the leaf blocks will fit around that. Also, I have in mind to point the leaves toward the corners and then figure out how to orient the remaining middle leaves. Nothing can happen until the final eight leaves are finished, and that's my top priority for today's sewing.

By then, I was tired of working on it, and I wanted to finish off the binding on the Snowflakes quilt. Sadie is my best stitching cat for quilt bindings. She keeps the quilt from flapping around while simultaneously keeping my lap warm. She's an excellent multi-tasker. When she's really on a roll, she can even taking a nap while attending to her other tasks.

It took a little over an hour, and then it was finished. It was dark outside by then, and so I requested the assistance of my quilt holder-upper for this picture.

Here's how it looks from the back:

It ends up at 57 x 71 inches. It'll be put aside now, and if it's possible, I'm going to enter it into the Oregon State Fair next year. I haven't entered any quilt shows for several years. They were canceled because of COVID, and then the timing was never right to coincide with our travels. I've missed the fun of seeing one of my quilts hanging in a show. 

Quilting and binding the Snowflakes quilt was November's 

and so I'll link up there when the party starts at the end of the month.

So do you want to know what I did in my slow cooker yesterday? This was so tasty. Mike really liked it. These are Slow Cooker Meatballs in Tomato Sauce. You can find the recipe at that link I just gave you. We had ours on a hoagie roll with some chips on the side. (I like to make something simple on Fridays.)

If you click on the recipe, you'll see that it's pictured on a roll there too. Then, the recipe never mentions making meatball sandwiches, instead suggesting serving the meatballs by themselves in a bowl. There are lots of ways to serve this. It could be served alone or over pasta, or even over spaghetti squash. We liked it as a sandwich. 

Also, the recipe says to use canned whole tomatoes. Then right away you're supposed to crush them with your hands before putting them into the slow cooker. So, I wondered, why not just purchase already crushed tomatoes? I wondered if they preferred a chunkier sauce or something. It didn't seem to make a lot of difference, and I ended up using a potato masher to crush mine. Next time, I'll purchase already crushed tomatoes. One other thing the recipe doesn't mention is the size of the meatballs. I made mine about an inch and a half, and that used all of the mixture to make 18 meatballs. At three per sandwich, you have sandwiches for six.

So I can recommend this. I used to shy away from making meatballs, but I've discovered them to be easy and quick to make. I don't use a spoon or any sort of tool to make them, preferring to use the tools at the ends of my arms. They're very handy. (Did you see what I did there?) Just dig in with both hands and smoosh it all together that way. 

Okay, so I have one small housekeeping task to get done today, and then I'll get back to work on my leaves. If time allows, I might make some Gingerbread Biscotti. It's one of our holiday favorites, and now seems like a good time to get going on it.