No tomato left behind...

     Here I am, almost missing another week of blog, but truth be told, my last minute outdoor projects have sucked up a lot of time with not a lot of sewing happening. I think yesterday was our last day of summer... we had temperatures in the 80s for quite a few days, but this morning it is blissfully cool-- I needed a jacket to go out and feed my chickens. I am starting to really look forward to snugging in for long winter's sew.

    There's always something to talk about, and this is what I have accomplished in the past ten days:

         The Moda Love Layer Cake quilt is finished. It doesn't look finished here, but photography has also gone by the wayside! I cannot recommend this pattern enough-- it is FREE-- and it is just one HUGE quilt block-- the same amount of sewing you would do for a 12" block. The HSTs are HUGE-- I have had the thought that you could take any of your basic HST block patterns and make them HUGE with these 10" layers cakes and come up with a quick quilt. I noticed in Lori Holt's upcoming book, she has some HUGE churn dash block quilts and HUGE Ohio Star blocks. They are super modern looking. Consider HUGENESS for new, quick project. Just pick a favorite quilt block.

     The Moda Love quilt is for a wedding at the end of October-- I'm hoping to load it to the longarm tonight. If you are fond of Apps on your iPad-- get Procreate for $9.99-- you can take a picture of your quilt and audition quilting ideas right over it, if you have the Apple Pen! I want to do something quick for this-- I'm practicing drawing leaves and flowers in triangle shapes. (This couple loves nature.) I can't wait to do it-- I am just in love with my beautiful Innova right now.

        I also took pictures of my sixteen, beautiful patriotic basket blocks and cut them out so I could just lay them out on my cutting mat and arrange them. These blocks are HUGE-- (a theme here, lately) at 16" finished. It's based on the Summer Memories quilt by Susan Ache, except bigger. heehee. Way too big to lay out on a design wall if I even had one. So this is the layout and I really want to finish this up.  It's too HUGE for my long arm, 100" x 100," but could I do it in two pieces and then sew them together, like a giant quilt as you go? Or just send it to my longarm person and do allover flowers for the win. I clearly need to sew it together before any of those things can happen.

   Then I pulled out my Dungeness Crab piece. I made this embroidery design, seriously years ago, when we were in San Fran and loved it so much, I designed a small quilt. I checked, and I have blogged about finishing it more than once! So I'd love to have a large and small quilt in next year's Maine Quilt Show and I'd love to wrap this up and have it be the small entry. I left extensive notes on what I wanted to do, yay!, including sewing tiny little seed beads in for some sand texture. And the fabrics are all still together. Is this the year?  I hope so.

    In farm news, the DD and I have canned more that 100 jars of stuff from the garden. We are novice gardeners-- the whole thing got totally out of control and there are tomatoes of all kinds, everywhere. My father--in-law, the Civil War buff, used to call the ones that just sprouted up from year's past "volunteers." Well, we could have put together an entire army based on all the varieties that raised their hands. DD thinks we have to use every one of them, as in "no tomato left behind," but this is what we get about every third day:

   Can you hear "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" ringing in your ears? We had a big argument over which would be faster: whether to continue making sauce, or just throw them in the jars whole. I won, and into the jars they went. We can make sauce out of them this winter. The hot spell has been of no help in slowing things down and the battle rages on.

    Next up--apple picking. Fun, but I now have a peck of apples to deal with!

   And my day job:

    Again, this photo is old, but a little final sanding and we are all set to stain both this deck and the cabin. I'll show you finished photos in about a week. Have you ever noticed that PREP is 95% of restoring any given thing? It's been a long haul.

   Finally, I have a fabulous fall table runner in the works. It has come to my attention that these in-the-hoop projects are super popular, but my question is, do they have to be cute? Do they have to say, "Happy Fall, Ya'll? We will find out, when this releases next week!

     So that's all I got-- wow, after a day of stripping paint, I am sleeping well. I sure won't be volunteering, like my tomatoes, for any more end of summer jobs after this.

Have a HUGELY amazing weekend!

xox

Carol