As Summer Slips Away

Indian Sari

There’s a chill in the air and slowly I can feel autumn approaching. All the signs are there, especially in the garden, where I’ve had to pull every tomato, regardless of colour, for fear of early frost. I have a fairly substantial garden plot and this year has been exceptional with a perfect balance of moisture and heat, providing us with incredibly high yields on some of our produce. After exhausting all my pickle recipes, I resorted to abandoning little baskets of cucumbers on my neighbors’ doorsteps in the middle of the night in the hopes they will be turned into a fine salad or condiment in someone else’s hands. Meanwhile I’m still attempting to conquer the mountain of beets (why on earth did I plant so many?) and today added beet jelly to my collection of various pickles, jams, jelly, and chutney already filling the pantry shelves. The kitchen is a hubbub of sticky pots and stovetop, colourful jars lined up on countertops, sweet bubbling concoctions and vinegar scented steam. One of my favourite sounds is the popping of those lids… the sweet sound of successful canning!

On the clothesline hangs a quilt completed this summer – Indian Sari. It was a wonderful experiment with colour and improvised piecing, inspired by Sujata Shah’s book, Cultural Fusion Quilts. This quilt was a complete joy to create and I look forward to further explorations using Sujata’s innovative concepts… but I have been trying to stay focused on projects needing to be brought to closure and therefore completed an art quilt top this week, with the intention of starting the quilting this weekend. If all goes well I’ll have something new for show and tell next week.

as always, carol