Lyon Mountain

Dad, Damon and I climbed Lyon Mountain this past weekend. It was pretty cool (in the 40s) when we started, but you warm up quick going up a mountain. We took the new trail. It took us about five hours and on the way back down there was hail and some light rain. As it was a holiday weekend there were lots of people, dogs and a parrot on the mountain. As you can see from this view from the top of Chazy Lake it was pretty cloudy and hazy.

A productive run of quilting and finishing

Since I set up the quilting room to accommodate machine quilting on my domestic sewing machine I have officially quilted and finished five quilts. Three were community service quilts - two were previously posted on the blog - the tree and star quilt and the multi-color disappearing 9-patch. I also volunteered to quilt a top that was donated to the guild's community service committee - that was a crib sized Cat in the Hat quilt that I also finished.
Also finished two personal UFOs. The first was the House quilt and finally this one which is from the Sparkle Plenty pattern that I bought down at the City Quilter a couple of years ago. The original pattern is for a square quilt, but I added an extra row of blocks to the top and bottom to make it rectangular.
I have to say that quilting and finishing (including putting on the binding) of 5 quilts in roughly 2 months is pretty extraordinary for me. Especially if you consider that late August and all of September is crazy busy at work for me. This puts my UFO list back into single digits - yeah! So I have broken down the machine quilting set up and as soon as the Christmas presents are shipped off next week I will be back to working on other earlier-stage UFOs and using up some scraps.
  

Fall has fallen

 The first picture is one of the maples in the front of the yard from this past weekend. And the second picture is the ground beneath that tree just a couple of days latter. The weather has been very warm and very dry so I am wondering if that is contributing to the leaves changing and dropping so rapidly. It is now officially leaf season - break out the rakes and the leaf blower!  Of course this is only the first tree (it always loses its leave first) we still have three more to go - and that's just the maples.

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.