Merry Christmas!

Another great Christmas. This is the warmest we have had since we moved to the Adirondacks. Today it is about 45 degrees and partly sunny and very windy. Damon, Ivan and I all took a nice long walk this afternoon.

Multiple Days of Turkey and Scraps

OK, the scraps got started a few days before the turkey but basically for the last week its been all about both. Pictured first is my 'crumb' bag - these are the smaller scraps from my quilting. Or at least that is what should be there - apparently I got lazy a few time as I did find a few bigger pieces mixed in. The bag itself is about a foot high and about a foot and a half long. So it looks like a lot of scraps.

But as you can see in the second photo it looks a bit more manageable once you pull them out and start ironing them and laying them flat and grouping them by general shape and size - in the photo this is only about the first third of all the scraps.

Since they were all laid out so nicely I took the opportunity to start making 'crumb' blocks again. I already have a quilt top made from them but it is a great way to use up scraps and I love they way they look. Just play some Jazz and do some improvisational piecing.

I also had been using 2 1/2 inch squares to baste into 1 inch English paper-pieced hexagons. As I found plenty of 2 1/2 inch scrap squares in the crumbs I also did some more basting and then started to sew some of them together.

I think the plan at this point is to do a few other scrap blocks. I found a foundation paper pieced star that would likely work well with scraps I want to try. Once I have a good variety of different scrap blocks I will make one good sized top with all of them mixed together. 

Not tired of the scraps yet, but after five days of eating turkey I am done with that for a while.

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.