Show and Tell

Well, another week has come and gone. The weather is getting cooler and cooler but not quite to freezing. I have pulled up all my vegetable plants except the tomato plants. I am hoping that there is still time for all the green ones on the plant to ripen.

I have given away a bunch of tomatoes but I still had quite a few very ripe ones and so I came up with the idea of making salsa. Well, I don't like spicey food but I do like Pace mild salsa. So I figured I would try to make salsa chunky and mild like that. I bought a white onion, garlic and a few jalapeno peppers.
I started right in and chopped 8 cups of tomatoes, diced onions and the garlic. Then I cut the peppers in half and started to wash out all the inside. Oh my goodness, I started coughing and itching and didn't think I was going to be able to finish with them. I finally did finish, cut them up and put them in the pot.I only put in half what the recipe said to put in.  I then bottled 6 pints. I gave two daughter in laws each a pint and I have 4 left. I am a little concerned about being able to eat any of this salsa but I will not have a problem getting the kids to eat them. They love spicey food.

I have now started on 2 boxes of pears. My daughter, Jenny, and I bottled one batch Wednesday and I have one batch going right now. That will make 14 quarts so far. Pears are a funny fruit and you have to be very patient with them. They ripen when they are ready to ripen and not before. I have another box waiting but I don't think I will be able to do any tomorrow.

Don't they look pretty.

I have a son who really likes his quilts. He still has the baby quilt my grand mother made for him when he was born. I had to have my grand mother recover his quilt many years ago because he was loving his quilt to death. Well, he came to me with the holey remains of his quilt and asked me to recover it again. I tried to tell him it was not possible but he almost begged. This quilt was mostly holes so I am referring to this new outer skin as 'encasing' his baby quilt. I put fleece on the top and cream flannel on the back. I attempted to quilt it on my HQ with a particular pattern but that did not work at all. I am lucky I got it to sew the quilt at all. The lumps you see are really lumps and I am not showing the back because the thread is a mess. So I am done and he assures me that he is happy. He hasn't seen it yet.

I have decided to put the Smith Mountain Morning quilt together and now it is a top.

It is beautiful! I am working on another quilt top but I will not show it this week.

My daughter and daughter in law, Chelsi, decided to bring out my valentine quilt and try to arrange it on the design wall. It looks pretty good. I guess I need to work on this quilt top soon.

Well, this is all for this week. See you next week!

A Top is Ready But.........

Another busy week has come and gone. I have made some progress and feel pretty good about what I have finished.

I am adding the final 1 1/2 inch square to the ends of the final blue logs for the Smith Mountain quilt.

 I have added the one side and then the final one will go on.

These are my blocks for my leader ender project. I now have 100 blocks. Not sure how many I will end up with because I still have half squares left to add so I am just continuing to sew them together.

Here I have completed the log blocks and put them all up on my design wall. I had two helpers to make sure I got them all in the right order.

Aurora

Sophia

Aurora & Sophia

They like to have their pictures taken.

Can you tell?

I have posted that I don't put pictures of family in my blog because my husband said I shouldn't. Last night I was showing him these two grand daughters in the pictures above and he thought I should put them in the blog. I reminded him that he didn't think I should have pictures in the blog of family. He said he just didn't want his picture in the blog. He thought the girls look great!

Now the blocks for this quilt are up on the design wall I am feeling very tempted to put the quilt together now. I guess I will decide this week. If I put them together then I will need to come up with another project to take to Reno next month.  Hmmmm decisions, decisions. What to do?

Stay tuned and I will decide this week and show what I decide to do about this in my blog next week.

Harvesting Not Quilting

Try as I may I am not going to be quilting for a while. Although for a half hour last night I started to piece together my alternate block for the Smith Mountain quilt. It is a good thing I did too. So now I have decided that I need to get all of those blocks together before I leave next month because I am notorious for miss counting my pieces and I could cause myself allot of problems after I get there and I won't be able to do anything about it once I get there. I am going to carve out some time to piece.

I have had two interviews this week so some of my time has been taken with those kinds of things.

The zucchinis are also growing like crazy so yesterday morning I made a double batch of chocolate chip muffins, 2 breads and a double batch of lemon zucchini cookies. Good thing I have grand kids here to help eat these. I put the breads in the freezer for later though.

The afternoon yesterday I spent bottling. This week has been peaches.

For a total of 27 quarts. Don't they look pretty?

I bought 3 boxes of peaches.

Last week I made tomato juice, 27 quarts. They look good too! I bought 3 boxes of tomatoes.

In two weeks I will be picking up three boxes of pears and after they are done I will get apples for applesauce. I will be very busy right up to when I leave for Reno. This month is going to fly by!

Well, I need to finish getting ready for this interview so I will sign off for now.

This, That & Making Slow Progress

After writing my post last week I realized that I had skipped Chelsi's quilt. So I went hunting for the pictures of that quilt and I found three pictures but two have her in them. I do not put family in my blog for the most part. This picture is not very good but I wanted to show this quilt. I got this pattern from another designer other than Bonnie Hunter and I have the book but right off the top of my head I can't remember the designers name.

I also went looking for my son Luke's quilt and finally found it. It is from DEC 2005 and at that time I just put quilt pictures in the folder for the month and did not keep them separately like I do now.

 This quilt was a labor of love. Almost all of our family members made a block.

Luke's family members have more than one block. I haven't put in a number of the pictures I have of this quilt because there are family pictures in the quilt and I didn't want to have them be too clear to actually see the faces.

Every block has flying geese. I quilted this in the quilt as you go method but did it in rows. I did it all on the DSM. This was when I decided that I couldn't quilt on my DSM again. This quilt is a very large king size. It kills my shoulders doing this kind of quilting.

This is my box for the Smith Mountain quilt that I am preparing for next month. I will hopefully be able to finish the alternate block and sew the top together while we are in Reno, NV for the conference.

These 1 1/2 inch squares are for the block.

These are for the pieced outer border. I am taking the pieces for the outer border just in case I get that far in the piecing.

Well, I need to sign off for now. Talk next week.

Things are Starting to Settle

Well, it has been another week and things around here are looking a little bit better every day.
I have not worked in my quilting studio but I thought I would talk about the quilts I have made for my kids. I have made several over the years.

This is a Bonnie Hunter free pattern on her website Quiltville, Chunky Churndash. I made this for my oldest son Garrett.

This is Scrappy Mountain Majesty from Bonnie's website. I have made three of these quilts. This is the first one I made and it went to Garrett's wife Tosha.

This is another quilt from Bonnie Hunter but it is from one of her books and I made this one for Melanie.
I have made two quilts for my son Luke, one of which I have already wrote about. It is a Quilt of Valor. He spent 1 year in Iraq. The first one I made was a huge king size quilt that everyone in the family made a block. I can't find any pictures of this quilt and I know that I have taken many picture of it. If and when I find the pictures I will show them on this blog.

This quilt is from Bonnie and it is called Smokey Mountain Stars. I gave this one to my son Doug. It is made from recycled shirts, allot of them from my husband.

This is Jared Takes a Wife from Bonnie and this was the first big quilt I made from Bonnie. I gave this one to Doug for his birthday.

This one was made for Laura, Doug's wife. It is not a Bonnie Hunter. I just designed it the way I wanted it to be.

This is a mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter that I gave to my daughter.

This one I have shown before in one of my first posts. It is a sampler quilt that I gave my daughter in 2000.

This is the one I made for my son Eli when he got back from his mission to Russia. Not good pictures and I machine quilted this on my DSM.

Well, I think this is enough pictures for this post. My husband and I are going on a mini vacation tomorrow and will be back on Sunday. 

I will talk next week.

Wow, 2 Weeks Have Flown By

Well, August is almost done. I have been going like crazy to catch up here at home because of being gone for 6 days. Luke and I flew out mid afternoon on Thursday and we worked like crazy getting everything packed into the truck through Sunday. Jared is a master at Tetris otherwise we would never have been able to get all the stuff into that truck that we did.
We decided to drive straight through to get home and Nebraska seems to go on forever. We left Madison, WI on Monday at 2:30p.m. and arrived home at 10:00p.m. on Tuesday. The trip was a blur.
Since being home we have worked hard to get things unpacked into the house and storage. This is a big job with 5 kids.
I have also been sitting 3 other grand kids this week because today they leave for Texas and who knows when I will ever see them again. They are moving to Houston.

I decided today to showcase a few quilts that I have not talked about on my blog. I make baby quilts for every one of my grand kids and then they get a twin size quilt when they are older. I have 21 grand children at this point and every one of them have a baby quilt. All but 2 have twin size.
Here are a few of the twin size quilts I have made.
The boy quilts I use a large center fabric and then I add borders. I try to use fabric a little older looking so they will still like their quilts when they are teenagers.

This not all of the boys quilts I have made but for the life of me I can't find pictures of a couple of quilts. 

This girls quilts are all different. They are all pieced quilts, most are Bonnie Hunter design.

From the above quilt I made two more quilts from the bonus triangles. One in purple and one in pink.

The next two quilts were leader ender projects. I gave the purple one to a grand daughter and the pink one was for charity.

This next quilt was a Bonnie Hunter design from one of her books.

This next one is actually a representation of two quilts I made for twins. The only difference being different borders.

The next two quilts are for two different grand daughters. I really enjoyed making these two because they are not pink or purple. Most little girls like pink or purple but these two like the bright and fun colors of yellow and orange.

This one is my nod to the modern quilt. I normally like the traditional look.

This quilt below is a Bonnie Hunter design in pink and purple.

I know this is not all 19 quilts I have made but I don't have a picture of one or two. I have already written about the one I made for Lizzy because it was the first Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt.

All of the grand kids get pillow shams or pillow cases the next year for their birthday. This way they have a matching set.

Well, I will sign off for now. I have really loaded this post with pictures and talk.
See you next week.

Making a Quick Update This Week

I do not have allot to report this week because 90% of my time has been all about the yard and the house. I have been trying to get the basement ready for our daughter to move in and also to keep the weeds down in the flower beds. I had one interview this week and a test for another job application so I have been out of the house allot this week.
I have finished the quarter squares for the alternate block for the Smith Mountain Morning quilt I am working on. I am now in the process of cutting for the this block but I have not started to sew anything.

I will not be able to update my blog for 2 weeks because I will be out of state for a week and when I do get home I will be helping my daughter's family get settled in our house. They are moving from Wisconsin and will be with us at least a year.

So my quilt studio will be a little quiet but I will be ready to get back in the swing of things as soon as possible.

Take care and enjoy the end of summer!