Busy Summer Days

I know many retirees ask this question; How did I ever have time to work? My summer days are filled with (morning) gardening or errands and housework, then lunch, and afternoons of  sewing and/or reading or more errands. And now the garden is coming on. We have been harvesting lettuce and spinach daily. Cousin Kim takes some and I always take packages of veggies all summer to my Weight Watcher (WW) friends. It’s interesting to plan meals around vegetables instead of protein (meat).

And the rhubarb! Yum! I chop and mix it 50/50 with chopped strawberries, simmer on the stovetop with a wee bit of water (and sugar to taste) for about 10-15 minutes. It makes a great compote that we use as a side dish (like applesauce) or on angel food cake with strawberries and dollop of whipped cream - almost like a trifle. We seem to eat half of what I prepare twice weekly and the rest is frozen for the rhubarb-less months of fall and winter.  Our poor apricot tree is so laden with fruit that we have propped up all the branches we can. When I’m out in the yard every morning, I pick up a bucketful of the still-unripe fruits that fall to the ground. Bruce will grind them up and compost them.

I was able to get a lot of scrappy sewing this week, and am linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog.  Our color for June is blue, from mid-tones to darks. First, I finished 10 anvil blocks.  I just noticed that they are rather randomly placed in the picture, but that’s OK. They’ll be mixed up with all the different colors soon enough!

Then I finished the garlic knots - 10 of those, too.  The garlic knots use a plain Kona White background.

And finally, 16 nine-patch variation blocks (courtesy of Jennifer C). They are the various blues plus black and white. I haven’t decided on the final arrangement, so you will see (and may have already seen) me play around with these as I sew them every month.

Next week I’ll be tacking blue strings, making some International Sister blocks (thanks to Preeti for the pattern and some dark complexion fabrics!) and then maybe get to crumbs...

I also have made some progress toward meeting my One Monthly Goal (OMG) for June. This is the pattern I’m working from, called Blossoms & Spokes by No. 2 Abbey Lane.

Over last weekend I got the nine blocks crazy-pieced and sewn together. I’ve made them a bit larger (1” wider and 1” longer) than the pattern calls for because I want more background around the flowers and tire.  I randomly pieced more than half the blocks (because I used to be a crazy-quilter and I like that sort of thing), and then used her template to make the rest.

There is one fabric that I think is too dark (I don’t need to tell you because it sticks out like a sore thumb). But I placed it where it will be covered up by the basket and flowers, so it doesn’t matter.

Once the background was sewn, I cut out a basket shape on some solid fabric. Then the instructions had me fuse some web to two fabrics, cut strips and weave them. They were placed over the basket base and lightly fused to it. This is what the basket looks like so far.

That took a long time, and I needed to get more fusible web. JoAnn Fabrics had it on sale for 60% off, so I went and got some. They had so many partial bolts of the Pellon double-sided fusible, and I grabbed all the nearly-gone bolts. The salesgirl thought some pieces weren’t good enough to sell because they were torn up or missing instructions, so she just threw those in. (Heck, some of it is going to get torn up anyway in the collage process). And since I cleaned up bolts, she was only loosely measuring. Somehow, I ended up with over 7 yards for about $8.50. SCORE!

Anyway, this is a picture with the background, basket and the next pieces - the bike frame and flower base - pinned on. My goal is to get those done this next week. After they’re in place, I can get the tire and spokes done, which will complete the entire base, which was my goal for June. The flower collaging will likely not happen until July.

I got the wall painted in our library/Africa bedroom, and that room got put back together. When Bruce cleans up his remaining mess (music stuff - I don’t fiddle with it, no pun intended), I’ll get a picture. The next painting will be the baseboards, closet and ceiling in the other guest room. But probably not this coming week - I have to pace my shoulder!  And we are still waiting for the new back door and storm/screen door we ordered for my studio to come in. We got a notice that the manufacturer has shipped them to the installer, so we are just waiting to hear from the installer to schedule that. Do you spend your summer doing little projects around the house too?