Blog Slacker

August was such a busy month with houseguests all the time and September shows little sign of slowing up, but add wine-making to the mix. The first of the grapes we are buying, Pinot Noirs, will be harvested tomorrow for a Thursday morning pickup. Let the fun begin! We are tentatively scheduling our own harvest for the following week when Kate, Benjamin, Alex and friend Dawn will be here. We are so excited that Benjamin will be a part of our wine-making and especially with our grapes!

I am finally sewing again and completed this Sew-A-Row, just in time to hand it off the Phyllis on Thursday at guild. I was at kind of a loss, having signed up when it was just a bonnet and flowers. The pieced row kind of put me off, but I loved the applique heart and flowers on green. I decided (with some help from Nicole at The Material Girl during our UFO Mini-Group to piece something for balancing the other pieced row. Somewhere, either in a neighbor's garden or in a blogger's garden picture, I saw some Black Eyed Susans and fell in love with the idea of using them in this semi-fall themed quilt.

I recently found Angie Padilla's website and her son has developed a search engine that specializes in quilt block patterns, so I found the Black Eyed Susans at Moon Over Mountain and I was off to the races.

I've never done curved piecing by machine, so this was a learning experience for me. I bought a Curve-master foot at PIQF several years ago and tried to use it with no pinning, but that was a bust. I ended up pinning both ends and the center and it worked out fine. I did have to take in a few seams here and there so the block would lay flat and it ended up finishing at 9.5 inches, but that really wasn't an issue for me as I was going to add the lattice anyway. All in all, I'm pretty danged happy at the way it turned out.

I went to the quilt show in Marin with Sandy Mc. on Friday and it was a pretty quick show, but more quilts than last year. I decided to cheat on the Four Seasons Quilt Swap and bought a darling set of hand-dyes and pattern to make the quilt. It will be lovely and given that I just couldn't get inspired, it will have to be OK.