food

Triangle fun.........

I got my Australian fabric triangles quilt designed yesterday while my 2 friends were here.  After lunch our committee of 3 did some fine tuning and then it was ready to sew.

I had to do some thinking about how to sew it together since the large squares broke up the rows.  I sewed the vertical seams to create many sections.

four berry pie.jpg

At 2:30 we took a break to eat some four berry pie that one of them brought.  This is my piece for today.

Last night I started at the bottom and sewed sections together, again with just vertical seams.  I have to figure out the pressing sequence before I can sew the horizontal seams.  I could have sewn one more section which is 3 rows that go continuously across the quilt but I knew my limits and stopped.

Sewing a little..........

My daughter-in-law stopped yesterday afternoon with an elephant ear from the fair for me.  It was still warm!  Yum!!  Deep fried bread dough, butter, sugar and cinnamon, what could be better.
While she was here I asked if we could make a path to my sewing machine.  She moved the dining room chairs out and rearranged the bookshelves on wheels.


Next I needed to clean off the top of the cabinet.  Most of it was just shifted over to a shelf on the rolling cart.





Remember the little 2" pinwheels made of the Australian fabrics?  The fabric I thought I was going to use as alternate squares didn't work so I used this yellow one.  The squares are 2" finished so you can do the math to see how little it is.  I will have more fabric to cut the little triangles from when I cut the rest of the Hunter Star blocks so I may add on to this later.



In the spring and summer I pull out all of the Goldenrod that I see but there are always a few plants that I miss.  This one is out by the raised tomato plant bed.

Many things........

Yesterday I wanted to get back to cutting my Kaffe fabrics in 2.5" squares.  I had 45 more fabrics already pressed and cut into strips ready to cut so I got that accomplished.  Then I decided I needed to lay out one stack in color order so I can tell when I'm ready to do a colorwash with them.  The two rows on the right in the bottom tray are multicolor, no specific color could be determined.
When I finished that I decided I needed to look for backing for this top.  I found one that I have 6 yard of and it is hanging over the arm of the chair.  Then I took the top off the double design wall so I can start using it again.
My unfinished projects have been nagging me so I pulled this one out.  I had stacked the rows when they were on a single wall for several months.  I started piecing the blocks in August last year and played around with a design for them.  I think I need to make some more blocks to make it one row wider and maybe one row longer.  I'll start cutting them today out of some newer Marcia Derse fabric that I have purchased since last August.
Yesterday morning I noticed I had two tomatoes starting to turn red.  I decided I would leave them until later in the afternoon and then pick them before the critters come and take one bite out of them.  You notice there is only one here....yes, by the time I went back out to pick them there was a big bite out of the other one.  I'm pretty sure it is the squirrels that do it but overnight it could be opossums or raccoons.  I have lots of green tomatoes out there right now so I'll be keeping a good eye out for any change of color and let them ripen on the windowsill inside.

Horizontal seams.......

I got the last 9 vertical seams sewn yesterday afternoon and last night sewed 8 horizontal seams.  All of the rest of the rows are webbed to the sewn section.

My granddaughter brought the 2 great-grandsons to my house and we walked to the closest city park.  It was a beautiful day to be outside.  I planted another Shasta Daisy before they got here and went out and pulled tons of Creeping Charlie after they left.
I noticed some black raspberries had ripened and was surprised when I started picking them how many there were. I had them over ice cream last night.  I noticed a Japanese Beetle on the bush.  I sure hope we won't have a lot of them this year.

Kits, garden, and soup.........

I am still cutting squares for batik colorwash kits and I'm at the point where I had to put the squares up on the design wall to see what I still need to cut.  I'm at 191 pieces right now and I want to do 300 this time.  I can see I need a lot more green/turquoise/blue and lots of medium values.





I made the collages of photos taken 8 days apart so you can see how much everything has grown.
 The hostas were barely up in the photo on the left.
The peonies have really shot up in 8 days.
Here the hostas in the foreground on the right are barely up in the left photo.  There will be lots more hostas in the next photos I take since some are just peeking out of the ground.

I was lucky enough to get one of the ham bones from Easter Sunday dinner so I made 15 bean and ham soup.





The ham was spiral cut so there was a lot of ham left on the bone.  Yummy!! 

#3 finish for March...............

I sewed on the binding and finished it by machine last night.  It ended up 47" x 59".  The source of the pattern is here.

I have a box full of 2.5" strips so I just pulled out nice intense contrasts to the yellows that would be the background.

I think the backing fabrics look good with the front.  The binding is the same gold fabric that is  on the back.












My granddaughter and two great-grandsons came over yesterday morning to bring me some Smores cake.  It is yummy!  She made it in the Rockcrock (by Pampered Chef) in the microwave.

Yesterday afternoon I pulled out large pieces of batik to find one to back the quilt on the left.  I decided on the beige one with the circles.  I got the seam sewn but haven't pressed it yet.

Party time...........

My granddaughter  is now a Pampered Chef rep and she had a party last night at her mom's house.  I had never been to one before and it was interested seeing the products demonstrated as she prepared one of the dishes to share with all of the attendees.
She had told me about the dessert earlier and I couldn't wait to try it.  It is a banana split dessert with pie crust, chocolate, bananas, strawberries and real whipped cream plus a few more ingredients.  I had the honor of cutting the 2 desserts for her and of course eating a piece....and bringing an extra piece home for today.

I got two sides of the binding done on the purple 16 patch quilt so I should have it ready to have its portrait taken tonight.

The last 4 mug rugs..........

I spent most of the day yesterday baking and making fudge.  Last night I sewed the binding on the last four mug rugs that were quilted.  I will have all of the mug rugs for sale on my Wandaful Quilts blog.



I forgot to do the photo update on my wax bulb Amaryllis.  It is getting taller and no sign that it is going to open yet.  I showed it the last 2 weeks on Fridays.

In front of the  bulb are my shortbread cookies.  I made the green spritz cookies also.

It started snowing early last evening and now the really cold air gets here.  Luckily it isn't going to last long and we might be above freezing by mid-week.