Quilting Begins

Good morning, my friends. The activities of yesterday morning took more time than expected. I ended up putting off hoeing the garden until this morning. Now, it urgently needs hoeing if I'm going to keep ahead of the weeds. So what was I doing that took so long? Well, of course, I spent a leisurely period of time taking the first stitches on the Fall Harvest.

After that, I made a salad for our dinner last night. Hamburgers were on the menu, and it seemed like a good time to try this new recipe for Roasted Hot Honey Sweet Potato Salad. This turned out to be very tasty and pretty.

The potatoes are first tossed with some olive oil, chili powder, and cumin, then roasted. It's combined with some pickled red onions and toasted pecans. It wasn't difficult to make. I keep pickled onions in the fridge most of the time. Mike likes them on sandwiches. So, I could skip the whole first step. Pickled onions are super easy to make. This is how I do them. Also, I'd never heard of "hot honey." Apparently it can be purchased in the grocery store, but I made my own using this recipe. I cut it by one-fourth so I made only as much as I needed for the salad with none left over.

Okay, so that brought me close to lunch time. The laundry was waiting for me, and I was still thinking about hoeing. If I don't hoe the weeds first thing in the morning, it starts getting too hot to be out in the bright sunshine. Instead, I harvested what I could of the vegetables. Oh my...zucchini...it's the gift that keeps on giving. One of those tried to get away from me.

Also, I picked another handful of green beans. Now I probably have enough for one side dish.

The annuals needed watering. In my wanderings, I came across the slicing tomato we moved out of the greenhouse a few weeks ago. I found this tennis-ball-sized tomato lying on the ground. The rest of the plant had been cleaned of tomatoes.

[Turns around and shakes fist at nothing in particular. Considers yelling profanities. Realizes there's no one to hear and saves her made voice for something else.] I have my suspects. They will pay...somehow. [Still considering how to make them pay.]

Okay, so having relieved myself of my hoeing responsibilities, I made my way into the sewing room and did my one-hour penance on Tiny House #28. My one-hour included time spent cutting apart the paper sections, choosing fabrics, etc. I didn't get very far.

There are just four sections left. I should be able to finish it off today.

Really, I wanted to get to the quilting on Books and Roses. First, I needed to sandwich it. That meant stitching together a couple of batting leftovers.

I started by just doing some straight line stitching inside the embroidery motifs. I had nine of 12 blocks finished when I needed to stop for the day.

Here's how that's looking from the back.

I'll probably do something similar in the block borders. After that, I have some pretty thread picked out to do some fancy stitching in the sashing, and then I'll finish off with something else in the outer border. It's all planned out in my head. I'll tell you more about it tomorrow...or maybe the next day. 

Tomorrow's post will be the reveal of my latest art quilt. Did you remember this one? Are you excited to see what it is? I'll admit to being excited to show it to you.

Okay, so Tiny House #29 has dropped. I'll get to that a little later in the week. This one is kind of fun.

When I mentioned doing yet another Tiny House, this was Smitty's reaction.

Probably, I'll continue on with my quilting today before getting back to the Tiny House. It means changing thread colors and machine feet, and I'll just pick up where I left off yesterday. It's a good excuse to avoid working on the Tiny House, don't you think? Yes, Excuses R Us. Anytime you need a good excuse, just check in here. It's one of the skills of which I'm most proud.

Okay...It's Monday. Time to get to work on the week. And today, it's good-bye July, and hello August. Where does the time go?