Checking In or Out

We're heading over to Ft. Stevens State Park, and I don't know if I'll be blogging. It always depends on whether there is internet access, but I'll be here if I can. We've been to Ft. Stevens before, but  it was many years ago. Even though we'd lived in Oregon for a long time, we didn't realize the historical significance of Ft. Stevens. There is an actual fort there! Who knew? Apparently a lot of people...just not us.

(image credit)

There's actually a lot to see in this part of Oregon, including the wreck of the Peter Iredale on a nearby beach.

(image credit: Joanna Poe)

So we're off to do some exploring and a little more shaking down of the new RV. Only, I have to stop referring to it as the "new" RV because the old one is so outta here. The new owners picked it up yesterday. It was fun to see them so excited about their first RV. They're friends, and so we hope to do some camping with them in the not-too-distant future.

And all of that to say that I'm signing off...or maybe not...we'll both have to wait and see.

Oh yes! Be sure to check out my entry in the Blogger's Quilt Festival. And then don't forget to check out the rest of the quilts. The Blogger's Quilt Festival post is right here. 

Bloggers Quilt Festival: Written in Thread

It's here! The Bloggers Quilt Festival 2018! It's one of my favorite blogging events of the year. For this festival, I dug into the archives for a quilt I haven't shown in a while. This little quilt is called "Written in Thread." It's a mini at 22 x 28 inches, hand embroidered, machine pieced and quilted.

When I saw this quilt made up at Pendleton Quilt Works, a quilt shop in Pendleton, Oregon, it was love at first sight.

Sadly, the quilt shop is no longer in business, but not for lack of trying. They were sold out of the pattern, but took my information and promised to contact me when they received more. I filed that in the back of my mind, but really had no expectation anyone would follow through. Imagine my surprise when they called me at home a few days later and then shipped it to me. 

The pattern is from one of my favorite embroidery designers, Bareroots Designs.

Once I had it in my hands, I couldn't wait to get started on it. Some of the embroidery was a little tricky since the blocks were oddly shaped in some places and also embroidered on some skinny little pieces sandwiched between traditional piecing.

In some cases, the piecing was done before the embroidery to make it all work.

Fortunately, I had plenty of help from cats as I worked on it.

Here are a few more close-ups of the embroidered blocks.

Here's how it looks from the back.

This is my 8th year participating in the Blogger's Quilt Festival. You can see previous entries right here:

Fall, 2010

Spring, 2011

Fall, 2011

Spring, 2012

Fall, 2012

Spring, 2013

Fall, 2013
Spring, 2014
Fall, 2014
Fall, 2014 (second entry)
Spring, 2015
Spring, 2015 (second entry)
Fall, 2015
Fall, 2015 (second entry)
Fall, 2016

Thanks for stopping by! Now head on back there to the Blogger's Quilt Festival and give my fellow quilters some quilty love!

Two Little Finishes

Fortunately, my shoulder pain subsided yesterday, and I was able to finish up most everything I had planned. The planning happened before the pain, and so there was a little more than I wanted to attempt. Still and all, I finished a good bit of it.

First, I finished the 9th of 12 of the Snow Globes blocks. This one is called "Cottage."

This being Sunday, I'll be linking up to

The lighting in my sewing room makes it hard to get very good pictures of these, but here are the nine I have finished so far.

After that, I needed to do some cooking. I prepared dinner for some guests we're having a week from now. Since we're going to be camping next week, I wanted to have it finished ahead of time. I made this Turkey and Artichoke Stuffed Shells with Arrabbiata Sauce. It's a bit of a production to put it together, but it makes enough food for an army. I filled one 13 x 9 baking dish with stuffed pasta shells and sauce, and then there was enough for another 8 x 8 baking dish of stuffed pasta shells and sauce. Now, both are in the freezer. I'll make the larger one for our guests, and Mike and I will save the smaller one for some future date.

Also, I made the mix for some Cantaloupe Ice Cream. We always get melons in our CSA shares for a few weeks out of the season. They're the best melons I've ever eaten. Farmer Jess posted this recipe, and it looked really good. So I mixed it up and then let it sit in the refrigerator to cool until later in the day. When I churned it up at the end of the day, it looked like this:

We had it for dessert while we watched TV, and it was really good. I left the cantaloupe a little bit chunky, but I think I'd go for a more pureed version next time around.

When the cooking was all done, I finished up the last three blocks for the fifth row of the Shop Hop quilt. This first one was from a really nice shop in Pacific Grove, California. You can find the web presence for Back Porch Fabrics right here. We were in the area to visit the Point Pinos lighthouse,

and so this fabric with ocean waves rolling in seemed just right. You can read my blog post about it right here. There were so many pretty fabrics in that shop, I had a hard time getting out the door without buying the place out. Even as I stood to purchase my fabrics, I kept leaving the register and grabbing more off the shelves.

The next one was from Quiltique in Henderson, Nevada. We were making a circuitous route home from Mike's retirement celebration at the Corvette School. Traveling through Boulder City, we visited Hoover Dam, and then spent a couple of days enjoying the area. I was fortunate to get a chance to meet up with Heidi of Red Letter Quilts at Quiltique. (Looks like Heidi has been MIA on her blog for a while, although I have seen her on Instagram lately.) Anyway, we'd been enjoying the blooming cactus all along the way, and so I chose this fabric.

As for the quilt shop, you can read my blog post about it (and meet Heidi) right here. While there, I found the perfect fabric for the backing on this quilt.

The quilt is so much larger than I ancitipated, I'm just hoping I have enough now. Just as I wrote those words, I went in search of more. I was able to find it online, and so now I have a huge quantity. I'll probably be able to make more than one quilt from it. Quiltique appears still to be in business, and you can find its web presence right here.

Finally, this one from Organ Mountain Quilt Shop in Las Cruces, New Mexico. We've passed through Las Cruces so many times in our travels. On this one trip, I managed to get in visits to three different shops. Las Cruces lies at the foot of the Organ Mountains, and it is a beautiful area. You can find my blog post about it right here. (I'd only been blogging about six months when I wrote it.) This fabric made me think of Mexican pottery, and that's why I chose it. It was long before I had an idea to make this quilt. Unfortunately, this shop is no longer in business, which is a shame because it was a nice little shop.

Okay, so I had the row sewn together, and then I sewed it to the rest of the quilt. Here's what I have so far.

There are still 24 more fabrics (3 rows) to finish before the quilt is finished. My goal is to finish a row each month.

The only other thing that happened yesterday was Mike hanging our new "Welcome to Our the Cat's Home" sign at the front door. Love it.

Today I'll need to make a quick trip to the grocery store, and then start packing food for our trip next week. The old RV goes away this morning, and then Mike will move the new one (I'll have to stop calling it "new" now) up closer to the house for packing. Tomorrow morning we'll pack our clothes and then we'll take off for a few days of forced relaxation. I don't know if I'll be blogging while we're away. The laptop is going with us, but it always depends on whether we have internet access. Time will tell.

As for tomorrow, I'll be back with a post for

Are you entering a quilt? I decided to dig into the archives for tomorrow's entry. More to come on that.

Blogger's Quilt Festival, Fall, 2016: Seating for Two

Good morning and welcome to the Fall 2016 edition of the Blogger's Quilt Festival. This event kind of snuck up on me since we're been traveling, but I'm ready to go. For this festival, I wanted to share my quilt, "Seating for Two".

This was the end result of a class I took earlier this spring from Ann Shaw to learn to make quilts using the Ruth McDowell method of piecing. The class was quite challenging, nearly bringing me to tears on the first day. You can read my blog post about the process starting here; and then, if you want to read more, just click through the newer posts for the next few days following.

Seating for Two is a commemorative quilt. It was created from a photograph taken on the beach at Rockaway, Oregon, when we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. Here's the original photo:

For purposes of the class, it was cropped to just the two chairs on the right.

Then began the tedious process of drawing in lines and creating the piecing pattern.

As an aside, let me tell you that 40 years of marriage will make your hair blow back.

The class taught me so much, and I ended up with a great commemorative quilt from this special weekend at the beach. Although the class was challenging, I'm ready to go back and give it another try in March of 2017.

Here's how the quilt looks on the back:

It was free motion quilted on my Baby Lock Tiara II mid-arm machine. The chairs and their "slats" are outlined and then I quilted some wavy lines for the "sand".

In the blue sky and "water", I used a sort of hooked swirl motif,

and then some rising and setting suns in the shell border. 

Here's the label I added to it (phone number blocked out).

Seating for Two will be on exhibit at the Northwest Quilting Expo this week (Sept. 22, 23, and 24) at the Portland Expo Center in Portland, Oregon. If you're attending the show, please stop by and see it in person.

Here are the stats for Seating for Two:

Finished quilt measures: 38 x 47 inches

Quilted by: Me! Free motion quilted on my Baby Lock Tiara II mid-arm machine

Best Categories: Original Design, Art Quilt, Small Quilt

This is my 6th year participating in the Blogger's Quilt Festival. You can see previous entries right here:

Fall, 2010
Spring, 2011

Fall, 2011

Spring, 2012

Fall, 2012

Spring, 2013

Fall, 2013
Spring, 2014
Fall, 2014
Fall, 2014 (second entry)
Spring, 2015
Spring, 2015 (second entry)
Fall, 2015
Fall, 2015 (second entry)

Now head on back there to the Blogger's Quilt Festival and give my fellow quilters some quilty love!

Produce Production

There's been no sewing here at the Three Cats Ranch for two days. Thursday ended up being a day of running around doing errands. For one thing, I wanted to pick up some poblano peppers so that I could make some green tomato salsa. There were several stops to make. I generally try to run all my errands in one day so that I can stay home most days and nurture my inner recluse. When I arrived home that day I found the nicest surprise waiting for me.

Remember when I made this quilt for a high school friend's first grandchild?

Well, I happen to make it a personal policy never to quilt for money. (There is no more expedient way for me to take the fun out of something I love.) However, my friend Carol happens to be a very talented whittler. You can see her work on her web page cleverly entitled "Whittler's Mother". In exchange for the quilt, Carol agreed to make one of her Old World Santas for me. It arrived on Thursday, and oh my goodness. Wooden you like one too?

When we cooked up this plan, Carol asked me to look at her page and pick out something I liked. Her work is all so beautiful and clever that I told her I couldn't possibly choose. I simply said I loved the Santas with cats. This is Carol's response. Here's how he looks from the back.

Instantly, I recognized the quilt Santa is holding as the "Merry and Bright" quilt I made last Christmas.

And the kitties are Smitty and Gracie! I love how she captured Smitty's personality (running so fast his ears are back) and the white spot on his rear leg.

And Gracie's disgust at having to share her household with this interloper.

Just adorable, Carol. Thank you. It pays to quilt for talented friends.

So yesterday, I put on my suit of armor and went out into the jungle of tomatoes in the greenhouse. This picture was taken about a month ago. They've grown even more monstrously huge since then.

Unfortunately, it's grown very wet in the greenhouse with the changing weather, and the tomatoes have stopped ripening and are instead rotting on the vine. It's the same thing that happens when they are planted outside. Our weather goes from dry and warm to wet and kind of warm, and that marks the death knell for the tomatoes. Nevertheless, I was able to pick about five pounds of green goodness.

which I promptly turned into green tomato salsa.

This isn't the first time I've tried to do something with green tomatoes. I've always found it rather disappointing, but this turned out to be surprisingly delicious. This morning I made up a big ole' batch of scrambled eggs and we topped them with the salsa. Everyone knows that eggs are just a vehicle for salsa, right? 

The recipe was from Marisa McClellan's Preserving by the Pint book, which is one of my favorite resources for small batch canning.

I looked for the recipe published online but couldn't find it, and so I can't link to it. Sorry. You'll have to buy the book (which would be well worth the money), or else use one of the many other recipes published online for green tomato salsa . Just search the Google, and you'll find something that looks good. Here's one that's fairly close. The lime juice was a big contributor to the recipe I used.

While I was out and about Thursday looking for the poblano peppers, I also picked up a stalk of Brussels sprouts. (Cue the Brussels sprouts haters. To that I say, I'll see your hatred of Brussels sprouts and raise you a serving of lima beans. Yuck.) I happen to love Brussels sprouts, but Mike doesn't care for them. Erik told me he'd had them pickled once and he raved about them. I've been wanting to try them ever since (for about ten years now). When I saw the beautiful stalks of Brussels sprouts in the local outdoor produce market, I decided the time had come, and Voila!

A large stalk of Brussels sprouts (about 30 inches long) yields about 4 pints of pickled Brussels sprouts. They have to sit for a week before I can taste them, which is just plain torture if you ask me. I'm very much an instant-gratification kind of gal. This recipe actually IS published on line, and so if you are one who loves this delicious and nutritious vegetable (one of the smartest people in the world, I might add), here you go. Pickle away.

So it wasn't exactly true to say that there's been no sewing for two days. I should have said there's been no machine sewing. There's been plenty of hand sewing, and I'm making good progress on my Gingerbread Square block. In the interest of eating dessert first, I went straight to work on the candies at the top of the gazebo.

Since I did all my housework and canning yesterday, I get to spend the weekend sewing. If my Santa and my pickled Brussels sprouts didn't make you envious, perhaps a weekend of sewing will.

Before I go I wanted to tell you to be sure to head on over to the Blogger's Quilt Festival sometime this weekend. I have two quilts in the show, and there are some seriously beautiful quilts on display there.