1,000 Stitches

I thought it would be hard to make, but I’d settled on the idea and there was no turning back. As it turns out the small quilt I made for my Halloween swap was a very fun and rewarding project for me. I told my swap partner it felt almost like painting with fabric and thread. A bit hard to let go of, but I can make more.

This was almost my first experiment with applique. I’ve been reading up on technique. Seems like it worked. Sometimes the way I learn things is not by doing. I read up about something, I think about a lot, work it out in my mind, mull over the angles for weeks. Then I’m ready, and my fingers do what my brain spent all those hours thinking about.

My trademark swirls are in there, but I think they make sense, since they represent the sky. Each different element has different colors and patterns of stitchery down to different stitch lengths, to try to make each element represent the actual thing it’s depicting in more than one way.  It worked pretty well, and in fact I ended up enjoying the back almost as much as the front, so I left it uncovered.

The most interesting part of this for me, once it was done, was not the way it looks, though I tried to create an agreeable selection of fabrics and patterns. It was the way it feels. It has a lot of texture. Maybe it was just me doing all the sewing, arguing with and smoothing the fabric.  The leaves and pumpkin are lined with felt before appliqueing them on for added depth, and the stitching just adds to it. It was a dense, compact work, with silvery bits of thread running everywhere.

I chose this motif for a Halloween swap because Halloween is a harvest festival to me, in fact a major one. It’s not all ghosts and goblins at its root. And harvest reminds me of Iowa where my family is from, and the fields and cool air of this season. Did I mention next week’s vacation is to Iowa?

I do believe I’m going to make another one of these. Maybe November will be good inspiration?

The (ir)relevant details of the project:  linen, cotton quilting fabric, felt, silk and cotton embroidery thread, cotton quilting thread, fleece, cotton bias tape.  Machine applique, hand-quilting/embroidery.  Freehand drawing/piecing of my own design.

In the kitchen

I’ve had one heck of a busy weekend. My computer was nonfunctional for most of it, so I didn’t even have any distractions to keep me from being rather productive. I’m also going out of town next week (vacation, yay!!!) and felt the need to get some things put together and put away around here.  On Saturday Jeff and I undertook a major closet-and-bedroom clean-out.  I’m pleased it’s done, and amazed at what was lurking in dark corners, but ow! that’s a task I hope I don’t have to repeat for a while.  My bag of mending is now full (ick), I have some things that will become fabric for other projects, and the rest got donated.

After a Sunday morning hike that did NOT go awry, we felt some food preparation was in order.  So we threw on our favorite aprons (hehe) and got busy making a mess.  I think we overdid it.  We made enough food for the whole week, and then some. I’ve been on a real food kick lately.  We scaled back our vegetable deliveries to every other week because we were just drowning in okra and eggplant and things, but we still have found ourselves eating at home and generally having more fun with eating.

I’ve had to be pretty creative sometimes, doing new things with the same ingredients, making stuff up as I go along.  It’s a new experience for this suburban kid to encounter a surplus of seasonal foods instead of the grocery store’s “sameness of variety.”  It’s working out, and as you can see below, our vegetable deliveries have gotten to be exciting for the whole family, not just for Jeff and I.

At some point in the last few months the deliveries of local produce, the hiking, and the unexpected vegetarian turn must have gotten to us.  We apparently decided that packaged food companies just weren’t doing it right, and that we’d just have to start make things ourselves. For example, Jeff has now taken to making his own energy/protein bars from a recipe based on Alton Brown’s protein bars.  Meanwhile, I wanted a salty snack that wasn’t Doritos, so I baked some cajun-flavored garbanzo beans.  Kind of like the ones here, but no pistachios and cajun-oriented.  TASTY.

We also made the buttnernut squash and sweet potato soup, pico de gallo and a version of my favorite charro beans, rosemary potatoes and some interesting gluten-free bread.  The bread was yeasty and it rose! (this is a major accomplishment for me).  And maybe we made something else, I can’t remember anymore.  I remember I cut up a lot of vegetables, and the onions were very strong, and that the liquid for the bread just wouldn’t get up to room temperature.

Kind of amazed at all the cooking we’ve done lately, really.  Stuffed squash, pizzas with feta and basil, every squash-and-zucchini dish imaginable, and a lot of stuff with pretty brown eggs and lovely berries.  Summer may be long and hot, but at least it grows a lot of nice pretty green stuff.

In other news, I have received my swap partner’s package and she’s received mine.  I love getting packages, and this one was full of fun stuff, although the swap rules are that I can’t show you what I got until October 8.  But I can show you what I made for her, which was such fun!  I’ll do that tomorrow

Round-up

I’ve been a busy camper since my last post.  We had a hurricane-related guest who returned home to find her huose still standing.  I worked furiously, no feverishly to get all of my self-assigned tasks for last week accomplished, had a weekend full of weird things that sorta didn’t work out and finally I just got sick over the past few days.  I’m looking forward to life feeling more like normal.

The brain was nevertheless working and the fingers were busy. Last week my kitchen table spent time looking like a cyclone had hit it.  Who am I kidding? It still kinda looks like this:

It shows a bit of what I may have been working on and that it’s fall-like, but it does not give too many hints.  No sirree.  My swap partner might not have opened her package yet, so this is all anyone gets.  Some of it’s for me, though, I have to admit.  I am a bit fall crazy at the moment.  You see, I actually seem to have a bit of reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder. I get a bit nuts with cold and dark, but I get much more depressed and out of sorts when the days are relentlessly hot and humid and sunny.  Go figure.  Such was June, July and August, and I’ve really struggled with it these past weeks, trying to feel somewhat energetic or interested in things.

This little bundle of fur made it better.  I know she likes us, but in that cat-like way she is always nearby and watching us, but never too near us.  I took this sitting at the kitchen table, she was next to me.  Jeff’s mom brought coolers to save her stuff from defrosting while her house had no power, and so Callie slept there next to me for hours while I worked.

Meanwhile I’ve mostly been resting and catching up on old reading, meaning I’ve been devouring tomes on the middle ages and sci-fi stuff. Did you know there was a lagoon city before Venice called Altinum? In fact, Venice’s builders went there after being chased off from Altinum by barbarians.  While I was [working on secret project] I also watched the History Channel’s Barbarians II series which was pretty good.  I will admit to talking to the television and telling it what was historically inaccurate.  It’s just possibly I might have spent two years of my life studying the early Germanic tribes, so…

Jeff and I did make an attempt to hike at Pedernales Falls SP last weekend.  FAIL.  We got lost on a number of back roads because the GPS in yon iPhone disappears when you get too far off county roads.  I saw some neat things, and would like to go back and bring my camera, but meanwhile all I have is this picture of the Pedernales River (pronounced Purd-uh-naal-ez ’round hereabouts).  That right there was where I got my shoes and socks so wet the hike had to be scrapped.  At least it was pretty!

If you have a moment, check out this Japanese train furnished in IKEA that’s pretty darn snazzy & surprising.  My other thought was “that wouldn’t last 10 minutes before someone [insert something gross] on it in Manhattan.”  I’m a Manhattan fan, but it’s true.

Off to play and work!