Little Projects

I have gotten almost nothing done since last week.  I think the cabin fever may be setting in.  

I sewed a bit more of the Frolic quilt together.  Here you can see what I have done versus how much is left. I'm nearing the half way point. It is just a lot of piecing and a lot of seams.

I finished stitching down all of the appliqués for the Julia Quiltoff class project.  The next part of the class is the quilting portion.  I bought the kit from Julia and the appliqué shapes already had the fusible applied and the shapes cut out.  The kit also included batting, backing, interfacing, and binding fabrics.  Really, everything except the thread.  You may wonder why I might need more batting.  Well, I have not worked with wool batting before, nor have I worked with a double layer of batting, and the kit had supplies for both! I am always interested in learning new skills.  You can find the free class on Julia's Facebook page and look for kits in her Etsy store.  Just search her name.
I have been really antsy and couldn't focus this week, so I decided to finish stitching together this group of blocks.  This is an ongoing project using Moda Cupcake Mix papers and a variety of American Jane fabric lines.  With the completion of these, I have two sets done and six or seven more sets to make.  I think each set makes around 80 blocks.  The blocks are 3.5".
I am happy that my fabric order finally came in so that I can start my friend Denise's quilt along, a few weeks late.  Here are my fabrics--Petal Party by Island Batiks.  I just need to decide on how I want them to appear in the pattern.  It seems so hard to make any decisions lately.  You can grab a copy of the pattern here.

No further progress has been made on either the Fig Tree blocks or the Bonnie Hunter Unity.  I did finish my second quilt of the year, my Meadowland quilt.  I haven't gotten any pictures of the finished quilt yet though.

My vegetable garden seeds are starting to sprout.  Of course we had a freeze warning last night, so we had to cover the sprouts and hope for the best.  Last week it was in the 80s and I was wearing shorts.  This week it is a winter coat.

I have a few more flower pictures to share.  Most of the daffodils are done, but there are a few hanging in there.  I'm happy my tulips made it.  We had a pretty strong storm last week and I was worried they'd get broken off in the wind.  There are no surviving tulips at all in the front yard.  While the tulips are gone due to critters, we had a lot of other plants that didn't survive the winter due to unknown reasons.  Could be animals, could be something else.  Not sure if I'll get to replace them this year or not.


I also have this little iris blooming.  The flowers are almost right on the ground.  I'm a bit stumped.  Usually the Siberian iris bloom first, and they are nowhere near bloom stage.  This is a regular iris.

One of my pear trees has blossoms, but not the other.  I am doubtful we will have any pears this year.  We didn't have any last year either, and only three tiny ones that disappeared the first year.

Speaking of pears, I really wanted to can some more. They are quite possibly my most favorite food on earth.  Alas, they were not on sale, but pineapples were.  So this week it was time to can some pineapple. It occurred to me on Monday that I hadn't checked whether I had lids for the jars.  I had just enough for my project. No more canning for me until we can find lids reasonably somewhere. (I found some on Amazon for $12/package.  They usually are $4/package.)    

I also decided to try to root the three pineapple tops from the canned pineapples.  Here they are in the drying out stage before I start the rooting stage.  I am using the Empress of Dirt method this time.  If any of these root, maybe I'll get another home-grown pineapple in five or six more years!


Have you grown any food from kitchen scraps before?

Linking with For the love of geese and My Quilt Infatuation.

2 comments

  1. Many of your photos are missing. The applique turned out great and I think it will be awesome with wool batting, you should try it. Last year I received a crib size in the IB box and was nervous about quilting it. I didn't have to make any changes on my machine, it quilted like the cotton.

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  2. Ah! Thank for letting me know about the pictures. They should be fixed now.

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