Time sure flies between my posts. I keep telling myself to post more often, but I get too busy or distracted with other things. I hate waiting too long because after a certain time of not posting, I have to take extra steps to get logged in, and that's a pain in the butt. I'm not sure what the time limit is, but that is what I am trying to avoid. Even if it's a really really really really boring post.
I wanted to post an update on PW's quilt.
I got all the sashing sewed on. I think it looks really cute with the striped sashing. Some of the blocks ended up being a tad askew, but it's homemade and this was my first time doing this method of QAYG.
This is how the kitties turned out.
In my last post I expressed concerns about how they would turn out. I think I'm happy with how the front paws turned out, but I'm not happy with how the ears turned out. The kitty block was one that I had to do the math myself and expand the size of the original pattern in order to make it usable for this quilt. When you're working with points like this, you have to account for it in your seams, and I guess I'm too much of a novice to figure that out accurately. Anyway, if you step back and look at the whole quilt, it's not anything that jumps out at you right away. If PW doesn't like it, I'll keep the quilt myself (but I know she will like it).
So now that I got that part done, the next step is the border, and I want to try putting a picket fence border around the whole thing. I've never done that before, so it will be a new challenge. Before I can proceed with that, I need to go to a quilt shop and buy some fabric, which won't be until maybe next week, so I put PW's quilt on the back burner for now, and started a smaller project to work on.
I found this pattern on Pinterest.
It's cute, BUT! it's FPP (Foundation Paper Piecing), which I really suck at because I have almost no experience with FPP. I was playing around with it last night, and had the worst time getting it right. You have to make sure your pieces are big enough, and turned the right way. It's so confusing because your fabric pieces get turned and flipped, so I kept asking myself which way do I sew this on? I made three attempts at Section A before I finally got it. So Section A is done! But when I started section B, I made a mistake right away, so that is when I decided to just walk away from it. Maybe tonight I'll try it again. I've watched a lot of YouTube videos about FPP and found one method that I really like that I'm going to stick with. I like this method because you're not sewing through the paper only to rip it all out later. And I'm not dulling my sewing needle, and I can use the same pattern paper over and over again. So anyhoo, I'm hoping I'll get better at doing this so I can put it together without wasting so much of my background fabric - I only have two 10" squares of the cream-colored background fabric and I need it to be enough for the whole pumpkin. I have a feeling I'm going to run out before I'm done. Anyway, if I get good enough at this, I would like to make three of them (one for PW, one for Steph, and one for me). On the same website, they also have a pattern for a black cat and also a witch. But I just want to focus on the pumpkin for now.
So last Saturday the weather was so nice: warm and sunny. Temps were in the 70s. So out of the blue, Chuck decided he wanted to go to Talkeetna. This is what we saw on our way up there.
When we got to Talkeetna, there were a lot of people there. That happens when the weather is nice. Lots of tourists there. I was really mad at myself because after we parked the car, I got out of the car forgetting to grab my camera. So I had to rely on Chuck to take pictures. He only took two pictures of this:
We walked around and went inside some of the shops but didn't buy anything. Then we came to my favorite part: a quilt store called "The Patchwork Moose". Every time I go to Talkeetna I end up buying something from there. I always look forward to going in there. On the way home Chuck made a comment about going there just for an expensive quilt shop trip. Heh, heh.
I found a few things in there that I am excited about, but would also entail new skills that I haven't tried yet. One of them is a collage picture of a chickadee (I'm nervous about putting that one together - I'll give it to Steph if it turns out nice). The other one is something that I found that would make a really cute rag quilt. I've never made a rag quilt before, but I want to try it. I hear it's supposed to be really easy, even for beginner quilters. Anyway I found a panel there that has all the letters of the alphabet and with each letter there is an Alaskan related picture. Like the letter O is for Otter, P is for Puffin, S is for Salmon, etc. Anyway, I saw that and said to myself: "that would make a very cute baby quilt!" I have no grandkids (yet), but I am going to make this as a rag quilt for my first grandbaby. If I never get any grandbabies, then I will just keep it for myself. I also bought some fabric with birch trees - I have no specific plan for it - I just liked it.
As for my garden, it's doing really well. My tomatoes (in the greenhouse) are growing very nicely, and yesterday I noticed that our beans are finally starting to come in. Chuck was excited about the beans cuz he gets impatient waiting for things to grow.
We are growing Suyo Long cucumbers and they are doing very well. We already ate one of them. We are also growing Little Leaf cucumbers (for pickling), but for some reason we are only getting male flowers on them, so we're not seeing any of those cukes yet. As you can see in the background, we have lots and lots and lots of yellow cucumber flowers. I hand pollinate my cukes, but it's a waste of time to do that if they are all male flowers.
My flowers are also doing really well, but I only wish we had planted the seeds earlier because they are just now starting to bloom. These are called "Bees' Friends". They get really tall and attract bees. We often see Mrs. Fuzzybee flitting around them. We alway like referring to "Mrs. Fuzzybee" because of a Jerry Lewis movie that we sometimes watch. The movie is called "The Disorderly Orderly" and there is a patient in that movie and her name is Mrs. Fuzzybee. We always laugh at that silly name, so we always think about that when we see "Mrs. Fuzzybee" in our flowers.
The columbine plant that we bought from our local greenhouse is also doing very well. I always stop to admire these flowers when I walk past them. They are so pretty!
So this weekend we are going to Fairbanks. They are having a Family Day at the gold mine where our future son-in-law works, so I think that will be interesting. But there is rain in the forecast for Fairbanks all weekend, so hopefully that won't ruin it for us. We will have to be sure to bring our raincoats.
So this week I am getting prepared for our trip. Making snacks to take with us on the road.
So anyhoo, hopefully I will have something interesting for you in my next post.
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