A Few Finishes

Oh, I’m happy to get this quilt pieced. 

I had changed my original plan and decided to make the borders wider. I want it to be big enough to use on a queen bed. It seemed like a good idea until I realized I didn’t have enough of the border fabric. I bought the fabric online, so I had to order another yard. Anyway, I got it this week and was able to get the borders finished. This one is intended for a gift, and I was anxious to get it done. I hope to get it loaded on the frame today so I can quilt it. I pulled out some bolts to try and decide on a back. Here are some candidates.

I really can’t decide. I could also use this turquoise. 

I need to decide and try not to get stalled out on making a decision. That happens sometimes. I have enough of the border fabric left to use for binding.

I also got the quilting finished on Chris’s Turning Twenty.

It was a little too large to get a good picture. She is supposed to pick it up today. 

One thing I didn’t finish—this one:

I’ve got three of the borders made, but I have no idea what to do in the corners. I get tired thinking about it, but I need to figure it out. I may not have thought this one through. 

I think I have finished my canning. I used up the rest of the cucumbers and made a few more quarts of pickles, and some dill relish. I also got finished with all the jalapeños. These are pickled,

I make 9 half pints of candied jalapeño, but I don’t have pictures of those or of the dill relish. I’ll try to take some later. I think I’m through for the year. I need to go ahead and put the canner and the extra jars away and get my kitchen back in order. Today I’m making carne guisada, rice and beans. I usually cook for the kids on Thursdays. 🙂

A Busy Week

I feel like I have once again overloaded myself with stuff. I like to stay busy, and of course, I always like to help out wherever I am needed, but right now things are a little too overwhelming. I plan to sit down (when I have time, LOL), and prioritize what has to be done and make a note of when it has to be finished. 

I haven’t done much sewing for myself, but I do have a quilt hanging in the lobby of a local bank this month. 

The colors are more vibrant than the picture. 

There is a church in Refugio that has bought a quilt from me the last few years for their raffle, and two of the ladies stopped by to see if I had something ready for them. I don’t! They saw the quilt I’m making for my church’s raffle and asked it they could buy it. 

I told them it wasn’t for sale, but I have another in the same color-way that I can add some borders to. 

They like it, and they want a king size, so I am working on some borders currently. I’m not making good progress, but it will definitely get put on my priority list. 

Someone donated fabric to the guild, and I took the larger pieces to make kits for donation quilts. Betty helped me cut, fold, and bag kits for 3-yard quilts. We were able to get 15 kits made by supplementing from my personal stash. 

The next time we have a charity sew day at guild, I will take these kits and my 3-yard quilt books. It would be wonderful if we could get 15 quilts made for donation.

We are having another raffle at church for baby quilts. It is scheduled for September. 

Other than that, I am still working on customer quilts, and I am still canning. Yesterday, I shredded up some cabbage, and chopped onion, green tomatoes, bell peppers, and a couple of hot peppers for chow chow. I salted it all before I left the house and left it in the refrigerator so the water would leach out. Or as my granny used to say, I let it sweat down. 

I didn’t have a big enough bowl, so I used my cake carrier. LOL. It worked. I canned 12 pints yesterday evening. 

I am hoping to do some jalapeños today. The plan is to make some candied, and some pickled. I stopped at the store and got some carrots to add to the pickled ones. I haven’t figured out yet if I want to make pints or half pints.

A Day in the Kitchen

I was really hoping to have my Catch All Caddy finished so I could share pictures, but it didn’t happen. I’m pretty close, but I decided the stabilizer I had wasn’t stiff enough for the inside dividers, so I ordered a heavier one. I didn’t have time to sew this weekend anyway. We had our Fifth Sunday potluck at church yesterday, and I was in the church kitchen all morning getting stuff warmed up, tea made, etc. I took a corn and black bean salad 

and a chocolate cheesecake dessert. 

I was pretty determined to not make a trip to the grocery store Saturday night, and I made it a point to use what I had at the house. I had to get creative with the dessert, and ended up making up a recipe, but it was good. Not much was left. Thank goodness, because I didn’t want to eat the leftovers.

Betty and I went to the farmers market Saturday morning, and I got a lot of vegetables. I used to enjoy canning, but I stopped when I no longer had time for a big garden. I still feel like planting every year, but this year it was two cherry tomatoes in pots, and four jalapeños in the flower bed. Not enough to can! At the farmers market, I got two bags of cucumbers, zucchini, beets, okra, and more. I got really excited when I found some green tomatoes, and I bought a bag of those. I plan to make chow chow with them! I will need to go by the grocery store and get some cabbage and some bell peppers, but that’s doable. 

Yesterday afternoon, I washed all the okra and pickled four pints. 

I would have done more, but that’s all I had. 

I had dug through the garage Saturday and found my water bath canner. I can’t seem to locate the pressure canner, so the beets will have to be pickled. After I did the okra, I pickled the cucumbers.

I do the polish pickles, and I had found a bag of mixed peppers at the farmers market. 

I like the cayenne ones for my pickles, but I used the habaneros in three of the jars. I also bought dill, and I already had garlic. I made nine quarts. All sealed but one. I’ll have to keep that one in the refrigerator until it’s ready to eat. 

It’s not a lot, but I’m satisfied with the little bit I made. I was thinking about years ago when I had a big garden, and my dad had an even bigger one, and I would can quarts and quarts of pickles and salsa, and I don’t know what all else. Of course, jars and lids were cheaper then! I used to make zucchini relish, and I bought a bag of zucchini to see if I can get that done. I don’t think I still have the recipe, and I have been looking on the internet for something similar to the one I used to make. So still on the agenda for this week is zucchini relish, chow chow, beets, and jalapeños. 

That’s all for now—I’m tired, and I need to clean my kitchen. 

End of Week Update

Life has kind of been getting away from me lately. There’s not enough time in a day to do everything I load my plate with! I had an opportunity to go with some friends on a quilting retreat, but it was four days, and I had to back out because I really didn’t have time right now and I had made other commitments. I have been in a workshop for the last two days working on this:

These are the fabrics I picked out to make mine from:

From left to right is the outside, lining, and contrast (handles and piping). 

I am going back tomorrow to continue working on it—it’s slow going. I wish I could have gotten the pattern prior to taking the workshop so I could have gotten the pieces cut out and quilted. If I could have done that, there’s a chance I could have gotten it finished. I hope I’m not creating another UFO. 🤞 We’ll see!

I took my stepdad to the neurologist in Lake Jackson Tuesday, and he got a good report from his blood tests, so we don’t have to go back until December! It’s such a relief to get good news from any doctor. The doctor spent about 45 minutes talking to us about how to preserve your brain health. I’ll share it here in case anyone is interested.

1.  Healthy diet - primarily vegetarian, although he recommends eating cold-water fish six times a week.

2.  Adequate hydration.

3.  Ketogenic meal replacement once a day.

4.  Eight hours of sleep each night.

5.  Daily exercise such as walking or bike riding.

I’m not sure about the vegetarian diet—maybe I could move more in that direction, but I don’t think I will ever totally give up steak and hamburgers. I’m also not a person who is capable of sleeping eight hours a night. I have always slept about five to six hours and generally feel fine with that.

As much as I’ve been out of pocket lately, I did manage to get a quilt finished.

It’s quite large. Made for a recent high school graduate with squares depicting his interests and some squares from his late grandfather’s jeans and work shirts.

I made a flange binding from solid black and solid brown. 

Other than that, it has rained every day this week. I’m tired of it, but I’m trying not to complain since we have needed the rain. Water is standing in the backyard, so the mosquitoes are awful, and the dogs are tracking mud into the house. Oh yeah, I wasn’t going to complain. LOL.

A Day Late

I meant to publish this yesterday, but I forgot! I’ve been really distracted lately, and it causing me to forget things. I really don’t know where my brain is lately. I went to Port Lavaca Thursday to buy a sewing machine, but I forgot to take a picture of it! I found a picture on the internet of the same machine. 

I’ve been looking for a Singer 301 for the right price for a while, but it took a while to find one. It’s pretty dirty, so I am working on getting it clean. I now have a 301, a 401, and a 501. Maybe I can stop now!

I got a couple of customer quilts done this week. 

They have been picked up, and more tops were dropped off for quilting. 

I’m continuing to work on the blue and yellow nine patches, and I’m about ready to start putting them together. 

I think I need 64 blocks for the center, and I will use borders to make it bigger. 

I also got the blocks made for the batik quilt I am making for Melanie.

It will need some borders, but that won’t take long. I hope. I would love to get it finished and gifted.

What I’ve Been Working On

It’s been rainy here! One day last week, I got five inches. I’m not sure what the cumulative total was for all the days, but it rained pretty much every day. There were several days with lightening, and I try to keep the quilting machine unplugged when that happens. The downtime meant not much quilting was done. I did manage to get this one quilted and put the binding on.

This lady does really nice work—the back is always as neat as the front with no untrimmed threads or unpressed seams.

Even though I didn’t plug the quilting machine in every day, I had no problem plugging in a sewing machine and sewing. I have several that don’t have complicated electronics, so I don’t worry about using them when there’s a storm. I spent time sewing small random scraps to other small random scraps and made some improv blocks. 

I think I got about 20 done, so that was good progress. 

I also spent quite a bit of time cutting blocks. I had quite a bit of blue and yellow in my stash, and I cut some 3.5” squares. I have started sewing them into split nine patch blocks.

I got hooked on the split nine patch blocks several years ago (maybe 2010-2012), and I made so many I got burned out and didn’t want to make more. I guess I am over my burn out, because I am having fun with these. I’m wishing I had cut more squares in other colors. Maybe later. There are so many design possibilities with these blocks.

I also got a Villa Rosa pattern cut out. 

It’s for 10-inch squares, and I have a couple of layer cakes of Wild Poppy. 

I ordered two yards of this pinkish purple from the same line to use for a border. 

This one will go together pretty quickly. I need it for a gift so quick is good in this case. I hoped to get all the blocks made last night, but I sat down in the recliner to take a break and fell asleep. I will see what I can get done tonight.

Summer Challenge Part 2

I found the charm pack I was missing. 

I took it as a sign I should go ahead and sign up for Sarah’s summer challenge. You can find the details here. Bottom line: cost to sign up is $10, and if you finish the challenge by Labor Day, you are entering in the drawing for a $250 gift card. 

I went to Yorktown and got myself signed up. The pattern is a Jacob’s ladder, and I have a turquoise and a white to go with the three charm packs I have of the Chez Moi fabric. 

It’s an easy block, and I’ve got two rows done. 

I like the way it looks so far, and I’m anxious to get it finished. Of course, I have until Labor Day, so no real rush. The requirement is to do at least twelve blocks, but I have enough charm packs to do more, and I’m aiming for sixteen blocks with a couple of borders. I’ll post my progress as I go.