Still making progress

 So here is the completely finished Disappearing 9-Patch quilt. I am really happy with my quilting on this quilt. Very hard to believe, but I managed to quilt the last 3 quilts without breaking a single needle. Not sure if I am just on a lucky streak, or if I finally have the settings and techniques down for free-motion quilting on my domestic machine. I have one more quilt I want to quilt and then I will break down my machine quilting set up (which takes up all the space in the sewing room) and go back to doing some piecing and other sewing projects.

I am finally starting to get some substantial (for us) crops from the garden. Here is a picture of this morning's harvest of cherry tomatoes. I also got two regular tomatoes as well this week. 

 We finally got some rain yesterday, unfortunately it was a bit too much for this rose. The stem was broken from the weight of all the rain in the flower. Usually I leave all the roses on the plant and just go out and smell the roses each morning when I go out to water the garden. But as the stem was already broken it is now brightening up the kitchen.

Getting stuff finished

I am on a bit of a roll of getting quilting projects done. I had started quilting this years ago. I am calling this the 'Under the Trees and Stars' quilt. I was using star cookie cutters to trace stars in the blue fabrics and connecting them with random curls and swirls. After finishing the 'House Quilt' I pulled this back out and finished quilting it. I put the binding on at the Firehouse last weekend and finished hand stitching the binding this weekend. This one will be a community service quilt donated to the guild for distribution to where it is needed.
Today I also started machine quilting a disappearing 9-patch that will also be community service quilt. As the semester starts tomorrow I am guessing the run of finishing up quilting projects is coming to an end.
Besides I also have all the end of the summer projects I need to get to yet.

Late Summer Garden Update

 First up - the tomatoes. I planted three different varieties, plus I had an assortment of volunteers that are also doing pretty well. As you can see from this photo some of the cherry tomatoes are starting to change color. As we are having a run of warm and sunny weather for the next few days I am anticipating getting a few in the next week or so.

I started over a dozen sunflowers from seed this spring and planted them into the garden. First the cutworms cut about half of them down. Then the local deer ate the leaves off the rest of them. A couple had one or two small leaves on them so I kept watering them and the result is one teeny, tiny sunflower. It is pretty, but the flower only about the size of my hand. Glad I got this picture of this, as it is highly likely it will be eaten soon.

Next up is the pumpkin patch. I actually have a patch. The past few years I would just plant one pumpkin plant each in 2 different raised beds. This year I was a bit late with planing the seeds. I had pulled out the Hops in the bed next to the greenhouse so after that was done - I just put in a bunch of pumpkin seeds and they ALL took off. In the photo you can see they are taking off (into the lawn) and flowering. What you can't see is that there are a few small pumpkins are starting to form. So looks good for getting some pumpkins for Halloween this year.

The roses also all appear to be doing well. The first one pictured is the Julia Child rose. I was worried that I would miss its blooming as it was getting started when we were on vacation in July. But as we have not had a very hot summer all the roses keep generating buds and keep blooming. 

The final picture as you can see is another of the rose plants stating to bud again.

I am really enjoying the roses this year. I just hope they all make it through the winter so I can enjoy them next year.

A Quilting Finish - The House Quilt

So this WAS my oldest UFO (unfinished object) quilting project. I think I started this the second year or so of quilting, so about ten years ago. I did the piecing at the first Wadhams quilt retreat. I worked on the applique off and on for a couple years after that. Once that was done I did find a backing and then spray-basted it all together. But as I was a much less experienced machine quilter using my own home machine, I folded it up and waited till I was more confident. I will  say I am impressed with the spray basting (I used the 505 spray) it kept it all together, didn't get gummy or sticky, and kept the fabric from any major, serious wrinkling for the few years it sat there. I did a basic wandering free-motion quilting on it.

I call this 'The House Quilt' as this quilt represents many aspects of our current house. First I used reproduction fabrics, our house is old -built in 1876 so there is a nice tie-in there. The applique represents other aspects of the house. We live in the foothills of three mountains in the Adirondacks, I plant red impatiens in the flower boxes every summer, and ladybugs are a part of life around here. The property is full of maple trees, which is stunning in the fall, this far north of course winter and snow is a big part of life. And finally a paw print, one of the main reasons we picked the house we did is that it has a big enough yard to have both a garden and a couple of big dogs.
The plan is to hang this quilt on the wall in the enclosed porch.    

Chrusciki (aka Polish Angel Wings)

Later in her life my grandmother had me help her make Chrusciki whenever I was home visiting. I was never a big fan of it, I preferred her apple pies. But the idea was that I was to be the keeper of the Chrusciki for the family. I preparation for a visit home I am making Chrusciki this weekend. I don't think grandma ever made it the same way twice. I wrote it down a couple of times and for this round I used an amalgamation of those recipes along with consulting some others I saw online.
My version uses 11 egg yolks and 1 full egg. I am happy to report the the skill of separating eggs is like riding a bicycle, I was able to jump right into it again. You will also note that the vodka I used was also Polish - trying to keep with tradition. Damon suggests that the reason for vodka to be in the recipe is less for the food product and more for the convenience of the baker to have it handy while cooking, as I don't drink its kind of a non-issue.
The 'fun' part is the cutting and twisting. The second photo is the first half of the batch - half cut and the other half already twisted.
After they are twisted they get tossed into the oil. One recipe called for the oil to be 375 degrees F, but my stove only managed to get it up to 325.
Anyway the seem to have come out OK. They are a bit browner then I recall, but they have a good flavor (pre-powdered sugared).

For the record here is the recipe I followed:
11 egg yolks
1 full egg
1 shot of vodka
2 T sugar
2 T sour cream
1 t salt
1 t vanilla extract
2.5 c flour (sifted)
Additional flour for kneading and rolling out
Crisco - 1 inch deep in a pan for frying  at about 325 degrees F.
After they are done you sprinkle powdered sugar over them.

Garden Update

 So the flower boxes around the porches are doing great this year. We looked a bit bare last year as no one was selling impatiens, but as you can see we are back to the red this year. As one of the front trees was chopped down this spring the ones on the front the porch are getting a bit more sun, but so far they don't seem to mind.

The second photo is of one of the tomato plants out in the garden. Since June was so cool and cloudy they didn't make much progress. But starting this week we are having a run of hot (for us - in the 80s) and sunny weather this week so they are starting to take off.

Also at the moment three of the five roses I planted this spring have buds on them.

The only thing that appears to be having trouble are my sunflowers. something is chomping them off about mid-stem. I have a dozen planted and now I am down to about eight.

They sunflowers may also be in jeopardy due to our now fairly frequent deer visitor. While it is not unusual to see a deer in the evenings, this one has been hanging out most of the day. I took this picture around noon yesterday. 

Two Quilt Finishes!

I haven't done much on my own quilting projects this past year. But thanks to a spring quilting retreat I did make significant progress and this spring I did get a couple of quilts done.
This first one is is official called "The Ugly Brown Quilt." I want to state that I don't actually think it is ugly. I found the "Skylark" pattern in the 2013-2014 International Quilt Festival magazine and when I was deciding what fabrics to use I decided to use a large pile of brown fat quarters. I have no idea how I ended up with so many brown fabrics. I only remember buying a couple of them. And as I tend to use bright colors, the odds of using up the browns was slim. The quilt turned out so well Damon asked to have it. So you know it looks cool, this is the first quilt he has asked for. 
The other quilt was inspired by a quilt and a fabric bundle at my friend Carole's shop Fibre Junction. She also used nine-patches, but I also included center squares in the alternate blocks. The colored squares and the back of the quilt are homespuns.