Saturday, September 7, 2013

I woke up this morning having decided that I didn’t like the fabric we picked for the border on the baby quilt. I don’t remember dreaming about it, and I wasn’t kept awake during the night worrying about it, but as soon as I was up I knew I’d be heading to the fabric store.

Since it was way too early to shop I came up to my studio and finished sewing the rows of blocks together for the quilt top. By the time that was done it was late enough to head out to the store. Instead of the blue fabric we picked from my stash (which gave a darker frame to the piece but didn’t look very baby-ish) I’ll be using a much brighter variegated green colour. I never know for sure until everything is done, but both Lainey and Trevor liked this choice.

Pat went out to the yard this morning and picked the apples off our tree. We got about half a dozen in various sizes and varieties (it is an espalier tree so each branch is different). I know Stacia and Deloise made apple sauce and pies out of the apples on Dad’s trees and I thought I’d do one small batch. We cut into one and it looked firm and crisp clear though so we ate it raw. There are only a very few left now and not enough to make anything with.

Thursday night at the Guild one of the members was passing out bags of pears from her trees – the bears have been a problem for her and she needed to get rid of them. They were in varying stages of ripeness and some of them looked quite bruised and scabby. Once they were peeled though they were fine. I made Mum’s pear jam the last time I was given fruit, but I wanted to try a Pear-Ginger jam recipe I found online. The jam took most of the afternoon, and I ended up with only four jars for my efforts. I think it will be tasty though!

While my jam cooked and my jars sterilized I ran my flannel backing (for the baby quilt) through the washer. I don’t generally pre-wash fabric but I’ve heard that flannel shrinks so I thought I’d better do it. I also heard that I should pre-wash the batik fabric that came for the Block of the Month program that I am participating in. Once it is dry I think I’ll get started on it; I’d really like to keep up with this series.

After the Guild meeting on Thursday I had several updates that needed to be done to our blog. I have also been wanting to change the look of it so I got started on that chore this afternoon. I took out a few pages so we’ll see if anyone misses them! I still have more to do but at least it is a start.