Sewing and Cooking

By the end of the day yesterday, I'd accomplished everything on my list, and I had time to spare. We had leftovers for dinner, and so I found myself plotting and planning how to make the Heartland Barns quilt work. Earlier, I'd begun the process of making the maple leaf log cabin blocks. The original plan was to make a total of 20. My goal for the day was to finish eight of them. Uh-oh...here comes trouble.

I wanted to cut all the logs and background pieces. As you can plainly see, Smitty was a tremendous help with that effort.

Bribery always works when one has too much help in the sewing room. I bribed him with a serving of catnip (on the right in the image below). He graciously bowed in thanks.

From there, I could finish cutting the logs and leaf backgrounds.

Then, I was ready to make the first four blocks. Actually, I'd made the red one the day before, and so I needed three more.

I knew they'd be a scant too wide for the quilt center, but I've planned all along to make adjustments at the outer borders.

From there, I made four more blocks, and laid them across the top.

I've spent the past 18 hours or so trying to decide how to make this work. Just this morning, I think I figured it out. I even engaged some brain cells doing the math for this. It's going to mean making four more leaf blocks, but I think my design will be a good one. I'll explain more about it later. For now, just know that the plan is safely stored in my brain. Unless you think my brain is not a safe place for storing anything. In that case, you would probably be right.

Speaking of cats, this one was no help at all. She was waiting upstairs for me to do my kitchen tasks so that she could become my underfoot cat.

With her underfoot helping, I was able to can the Cranberry and Apple Mustard mentioned in yesterday's post. I didn't wash enough jars for this, and so I used the 6 half-cup jars I had prepared, and then washed a wide-mouth half pint jar. That one went into the canner for processing, but then it went straight to the refrigerator for Mike's turkey sandwich-eating pleasure.

When the work was done, the kitties went outside to sniff among the fallen leaves. Eventually, they scared up a mouse.

While they were on the hunt, I stitched some more on the binding for the Snowflakes quilt. I've turned two corners now.

My needle is approaching the third corner, and it's possible I'll have this finished today. If not, then tomorrow for sure.

Today I'm going to try knocking off eight more leaf blocks. My new idea for the quilt will mean making 24 blocks, which would be four more than originally planned. With 8 done so far, I can have them all finished if I do eight today and eight tomorrow. We'll see how many I can stand. Now that I have a vision for the finished quilt, I'm excited to move it along and see how it will look.

There's nothing but sewing on today's agenda...oh yes, and starting a new recipe in the slow cooker. I'm hoping it will be good. If it is, I'll tell you all about it in tomorrow's post. Let's all have a good Friday, okay? With the mid-terms behind us, we can all have some peace and quiet.