Rachel met a woman at the craft show last week that invited her to a "sit and knit" group that meets at a local church on Tuesday nights. Since R doesn't drive (not many 13-year-olds do), I drove her over and took my Apple Core/Seeds of Kindness quilt to hand quilt while we were there. We enjoyed lots of conversation and got some handwork done, too. It was a really fun time. I am about halfway finished. I was going to edit a picture, but it won't upload for some reason.
Rachel is knitting a scarf with a snowflake motif in it that she designed herself. She is a knifty knitter...so fast and accurate.
My log cabin quilt center is complete. It is 43" square. I am considering adding a very small border as a frame, possibly 1-1/2" finished. I will need to measure the wall where it will be hung tomorrow and see if that will make it too large. Here it is...I love it!
Now I am only SEVEN rows away from being finished with the body of my Seeds of Kindness quilt. So excited.
I am sending this from an Iconium Tablet, so it will not have a picture. Well, let me see if I can add a pic I took on the tablet. No go. The pic appeared to be loading, but then the little dots just kept spinning and spinning. Anyway, only 8 more rows to go on my Seeds of Kindness quilt, then 7/8 of the border.
Breakfast: same as usual
Lunch: soup that none of us liked much, but we all ate (that's progress). It was great northern beans, onion, celery, and vegetable broth.
Supper: very delayed because my husband and I were used-car shopping and got delayed about 90 minutes more than anticipated. I made vegan pancakes, and they were good tasting. The ingredients are flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, oil, and orange juice. Mmm-mmm. It was interesting that as we passed the supper hour, neither of us were hungry (not that we could have stopped at Vegans-R-Us anyway!).
I also hand-quilted a row on my SOK quilt.
Off to read some more about the vegan lifestyle and hopefully convert some recipes into ones we can eat now.
~Joan
Our menu for today:
Breakfast: same as yesterday...oatmeal with apples, raisins, and cinnamon. This is truly delicious. Wes peeled the apples today, which was a major improvement to ME.
Lunch: left overs from yesterday (pasta with marinara sauce, new steamed veggies or veggie stew over rice) with the addition of trying a new fruit...mango. We all liked it but would never crave it. We (with the exception of my husband) are not new-food tryers, so this was impressive.
Supper: Speedy International Stew. This was a matter of opening 4 cans and dumping them in a saucepan and heating them 5 minutes. But it. was. so. good...2 cans of Italian-flavored stewed tomatoes, 1 can of whole kernel corn, rinsed, and 1 can of black beans, rinsed. We also had sweet potato fries which were just raw sweet potatoes scrubbed and cut for fries and baked in a 450 oven for 30 minutes on parchment paper, covered with foil for the first 15 minutes. They were decadent. Soooo good. Will make more next time.
I bought 4 full grocery bags of fruits and veggies at Aldi today and only spent $26. Then I did some more shopping at Wal-mart. I was impressed with the small amount I paid for things (even buying some things out of season). Not buying meat, butter, milk, and cheese might be less expensive after all.
Of course I'm already thinking about tilling up the whole back yard for a garden next spring. Just kidding...I think!
The thing about eating this way is that because one is not ingesting tons of salt, sugar, and fat, everything has much more potent flavors. Oh, yeah...delicious.
The kids still have sterling attitudes about all we're doing, and that makes it so much more pleasant. I am striving to have some variety so we don't keep eating the same old things.
I had to take Rachel to her piano lesson today, so I got some hand quilting time in. The Seeds of Kindness quilt has only 11 more rows of hand quilting, plus the 7/8 of the border. Yippee!!
~Joan
I decided to keep a countdown so I can show that I am making some progress on this quilt. Many people blog for many reasons, but my reason is for posterity. I like to see the progress on projects. Sort of like a diary.
As of right this minute, I have 18-1/3 more rows to quilt plus 7/8 of the border. Stay tuned!
~Joan
Here is my border treatment as far as the quilting. I am hand-quilting the apple core shape in cream thread.
~Joan, who has a horrid headache...the first one in months
I had two doctor's appointments to go to with my oldest son today. Seeds of Kindness went with me. I hand quilted six more whole rows today.
The first stop was the eye doctor's. Every single person that came into the waiting room started talking to me once they settled in. They all said they remember their grandmothers quilting. One man actually asked to touch the quilt! People really come out of their shells when I am working on a quilt in front of them.
My dentist is the greatest (hi, Dr. Doug!). His office staff and hygienists always admire my quilts. None of them had ever seen my SOK quilt, and they ALL came out and touched it and oohed and aahed.
A close-up of the middle. I am a little less than halfway across in one direction. I am thrilled with the progress.
Here is the whole thing. I really like the way the edge is finished. I hand appliqued the center to rectangles for the border.
The above picture is a bit blurry...it's not your eyes! I took the picture over and over and could not get it to be clear. It shows the edge of my Seeds of Kindness quilt turned under 1/4" and hand basted down, then it has been hand-basted to the border fabric...the apple print. I worked on it about an hour tonight and have one side sewn down. I remove both basting rows as I applique it to the border. Below is the same section after it is finished.
Now the real fun begins. My Seeds of Kindness quilt has finally been finished...the piecing anyway. Five hundred twenty-five apple core pieces with just a few repeats. I have also turned the edge under 1/4" and hand basted it down. The next step is to see what would be the best way to use the fabric for borders for appliqueing the wavy edge down, backing, and binding. I have a six-yard piece of apple print fabric, so I want to use it the best way possible. Susanna has already said she'd hand baste it for me so I can hand quilt it. It measures 58.5" x 70" right now. I want to put a 4" border all around to make the edges straight rather than wavy. Like I did with this Grandmother's Flower Garden runner.
Speaking of gardens, I weeded and raked for a couple hours today. I'm feeling it tonight, too! I usually get sick because of seasonal allergies after being outside for more than an hour or so. My delight in the task was hindered by the allergy mask I wore. It made it very hot, and my glasses kept getting steamed up. I'm about halfway finished with the chore. I had three 5-quart buckets FULL of onion grass. At least that was nipped in the bud. Tomorrow I hope to tackle the half-circle bed around our mailbox. We've had so much rain the past few days that the weeds come out with very little encouragement.
I was so encouraged and excited to see baby shoots on my hydrangea bush. A dear elderly lady in my church gave it to me last year. It had the most fantastic blooms. Bright PINK! When I cleared the leaves away from its base, I saw that the old dead wood was GREEN under the outer flaky bark and there are new shoots coming up in the center. Aahhhh...green!!
My lovely assistant, Rachel, with a new short haircut...
I hope to get my figuring finished for the borders and have the hand applique well started on this by tomorrow night. My enthusiasm for this quilt has not wavered. It was just dormant for a while. Like my hydrangea bush!
Someone made a comment lately (a non-quilter, as if that isn't obvious). I was working on my Seeds of Kindness and she asked, "Didn't you just make a quilt?" My family members who overheard just kind of rolled their eyes a little as if to say, "Does that matter?" It made me think of one of my favorite quilt quotes. It's by Alice Berg, one of the owners of Little Quilts..."..."Making a quilt is like giving birth...You're excited when you buy the stuff, then halfway through you think, 'What have I done?' but by the last stitch, you're already thinking about the next one." If that doesn't describe ME in babies and quilts, I don't know what does.
Good night!
~Joan
I have decided to draw my Seeds of Kindness quilt to a close. I guess this type of thing could go on and on. There is one last vertical row pieced to add to the body of the quilt. I have cut out enough apple core blocks for two or three more horizontal (the shorter) rows, which I shall also add.
Since I had some significant car time Wednesday night, I took this along and started basting the outer edge under 1/4". I plan to applique it to a rectangle of fabric, then hand quilt it. This is a lot of progress. Once my car time depleted a year ago, it was difficult to make time to work on this little gem.
Speaking of little gems...
This is what I had on the design wall as of last night. Forty-eight light Bull's Eye blocks. Remember, this is a project made of left over circles from my larger 3-circle original Bull's Eye quilt. I have webbed the first three blocks together already, which puts me half way through the webbing of the units. This might get put together this weekend...and it might NOT!
My oldest daughter's spring break sort of starts today. She has a friend staying for the week, so I'm not sure how my spare time is going to play out.
Hope you enjoy today and get to put a few stitches in something that makes you happy.
~Joan
Here is an I Spy I am making for my sister's family. The colors are much more appealing in person. The orange stretched stars are a nice tangerine-ish orange color. I am going to put two borders on this eventually.
Here is a project that Rachel started from my leftover Bull's Eye pieces. She has lost interest in it (yippee), so I pieced a few blocks. Each quarter block is 4" square. This is an inverse of the coloration on my larger Bull's Eye quilt, and all the background squares are Thimbleberries (so far). The blocks are one inch smaller than my original. I am using the trimmings from the background blocks for my circles on this one. Couldn't just pitch them!!
