Last Saturday for Indigo

Absolutely no quilting done by me this week.  But my good friend down the street did finish quilting my Tumbling Stars quilt that I made as my RSC project 2 years ago.  Yes, 2 years ago.  I finally stitched the backing together and picked up some batting so Mary could do the long arm quilting. 

I think she did a great job with the quilting and I am hoping the red will work for a binding  with both sides of the quilt.

So what did I do this week?  Cooking.  Lots of cooking for a church festival and some preserving at home.  I have never made preserves before.  And I must admit, I enjoyed it.  Now I didn't go crazy as this was my first foray into preserving but I went to the local Farmer's Market and somehow we got out wires crossed and in doing the divide and conquer shopping we bought more peaches than we could eat.  I froze some, made a peach cobbler and still had a basket full left.  We had bought some peach chutney at the Peach Festival one year and I really enjoyed it with soft cheeses so off I went to my trusty cookbook and found a recipe that sounded not too hard. 

What a lot of work for two not quite full jars of chutney. 

 I had also picked up a basket of concord grapes and decided to try my hand at some jelly.  Yummy!  There was just about an 1/8 of a cup that didn't fit into the jars so I gave it the taste test and even warm it tasted so good!

Now all of this work meant a shopping trip before hand.  A new canning pot, some new calipers for removing the jars from the hot water bath, a magnet for picking the lids out of the bath and that miracle additive - pectin to get everything to just the right consistency.
The weather was quite cool last week and it was time to clear the garden.  The zucchini was prolific but we didn't have too much success with much else.  One of the farmers at the farmer's market told us he suspected our problem was an air born blight that hit the cucumbers and no one seemed to have much luck with beets this year. 

Our first small patch for veggies is now clear except for the fennel.

We left the herbs and marigolds in the second veggie patch.  We've been drying herbs all summer so should have enough to take us through the winter.
As you can see our garden plots are small but it's amazing how much time they took to maintain and keep weed free! 

Hopefully there will be more time for quilting next week.  I'm looking forward to hearing what the new colour will be.  Green?  Orange?  Brown?  I'm hoping for green or brown so I can finish off another row.

Checking in with Angela to see what others have been up to last week.

More Cool Indigo

My local branch library has a wonderful collection of quilting books.  On my last visit I took out Tula Pink's City Sampler 100 Modern Quilt Blocks.  She has blocks arranged by style.  Blocks 56 - 70 deal with stripes.  So I tackled 8 of them to share today.

Block 56

Block 57

Block 58

Block 59

Block 60

Block 61

Block 62

 

and Block 63.



The blocks were fun, easy and quick to put together.   I think it'd be great fun to make all 100 for a modern scrappy quilt. Another someday project.  I'll hopefully find a few minutes to make a few more blocks during the week (but not more stripes) and then dream up some little project that I can make using the blocks. 

I'm late blogging today but the Farmer's Market beckoned and that was number one on my agenda.  Now I'll check in over at soscrappy and see what indigo projects have been worked on last week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lost a Week?

Last Saturday was a busy day.  I was up early to bake a blueberry zucchini cake with lemon buttercream to bring along to a family birthday.  I used blueberries and some chocolate mint leaves from the garden to decorate it a bit.  It was a hit and will be a favourite of mine each year when we harvest the zucchini from the garden. 

I managed to find a few minutes last Sunday to finish stitching the last block in my shop hop quilt.

I thought I'd share it as the block is indigo and white.  That dot on the "i" in is looks a little wonky.  I'll have to see if I can do something about that.

 

It was good to carve out some quilting time this week.  The RSC blocks were first on the agenda.

Road to California

Bull's Eye

Teddy Roosevelt's Bow Tie

 

And I got the row put together and attached to rows 3 and 4.



 

Angela has designed a very lovely quilt.  Can't wait for the brown, light green and orange blocks and a finished top. 

 

Our local guild allowed us to borrow quilting books over the summer break for the first time.  I had admired Crosses Quilt by Kaffe Fassett in Kaffe Fassett's Quilt Road.

While on the shop hop I picked up a Marti Michell Catalina Jelly Roll and made short work of cutting it up into the 2.5 inch squares.  Then it was time to play on the design wall.

That looked pretty good and the stitching began.  The quilt top went together very quickly.  Once it was all sewn together I needed some additional fabric for the borders.  Do you think I could remember in which shop I had bought the Jelly Roll?  Not a chance!  So I spent some time surfing the internet to see which shops had a website and posted their fabric.  Thankfully the shop was just 45 minutes away from home and I set out on Friday after lunch to make my purchase.  After supper it was back to the sewing machine to get those borders done.

I decided to finish off some of the crosses into the border.  I like the break this created between the busyness of the cross blocks and the floral border.  The top finished at 57.5" x 69.5" - a nice lap sized quilt.  It's fresh and colourful.  Now let's hope I can find some backing fabric in my stash so I can get this top to my quilting buddy for some long arm quilting magic.
I'll be checking in with Angela and doing some blog hopping to see what scrappy goodness has been happening this week.

 



 

 



Deep Dark Indigo for August

Angela selected indigo as the colour for August and it sent me scrambling to look for some in my stash as there was virtually almost none in the scraps.  I was sure I had some mixed in with my Japanese fabrics but found I had used it up in a little wall hanging.  I managed one more shop for shop hop so picked up a few fat quarters for some variety.

I think everyone has their own idea as to what indigo is.  To me it is that rich dark blue used to dye denim and found some early blue printed fabrics.  I have some indigo with blue and some blue with indigo that I will use this month.  There's one interesting paisley print in there that may find its way into a block.

I've been trying to finish up the blue blocks from shop hop and last Sunday I was to finish this one up but life got in the way and it didn't happen.

The embroidery is to say, "The love of sewing is our common thread."  I've finished a bit more during odd minutes here and there but tomorrow is my target day for completion.

The red-blue pairs are finished:



 well almost - I see I'll have to re-stitch one seam to get those triangles to match up.  Sometimes those darn geese just have a mind of their own and stray from the flock.

The crossed canoes are new to me.  I've seen them but never made the block before.

I love the way these stars are dancing - every turn gives a different perspective.

The last shop I visited featured Grandmother's Fan.  The shop owner loves to embellish with lots and lots of hand stitching so her fan looks much fancier than my poor version.

And finally, the aim of this whole post - indigo.  This boxy star will be added to my collection.  I just love the two floral prints in this block.

Now I'm off to see how others have finished off their red.  Has anyone made a start with indigo?  Stop by so scrappy to find out.