A Long Time Coming…

… But I’m back! Somehow the month of August seemed to get away from me. I’ve been noticing that others have felt the same, with bloggers commenting on summer just flying by and now we have autumn right around the corner.

I’m secretly heaving a great sigh of relief that the gardening season is coming to a close because, as much as I love the beauty and the bounty, it becomes all consuming at it’s peak. I’ve been canning and baking and clearing out the raised beds as they empty of their produce. The pantry is filling for winter and I’ve officially run out of jars (hip, hip, hooray!).

The crabapples glowed like red Christmas lights

Jellies and jams have been carefully simmering on the stovetop and now the sealed jars are lined up like sparkling jewels on the shelves.

Fall's harvest

I have one true apple tree that provided us with its first little bushel of good sized eating apples, six jars of apple sauce, and plenty leftover for a pie.

Can you smell the sweetness with a hint of cinnamon?

There has been activity happening at the sewing machine and there is a quilt top mounted on the longarm as well. I completely finished my O! Canada competition piece last week, with only the label to attach and I can now officially state that the very last block for my Canadian Women project was sewn together this afternoon. There is quite a bit of time in on this project and I’ve still got some work to do putting the last quadrant together with its sashing, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m hoping to get this one on the longarm next.

A first and a last!

My Canadian Women quilt is going to be a bit different, in the sense that I’ve added some of my own blocks and omitted others. The final block I chose to make is a classic pineapple log cabin block made with some narrow leftover strips and scraps from the project. I wanted to go out with a bang, to make a block that I’ve never attempted before, and I truly LOVE this one! It turned out ever-so-slightly wonky on one side but considering I was winging it on my first try, I’m fine with that. This little stinker took ages to make and was totally worth the time investment. I have already decided that as soon as all my Quilt Show entries are complete I’m going to start building blocks for an entire pineapple quilt with all my scraps, perhaps as a weekly goal project over winter. Well, that’s the plan for now… we’ll see how far I get :o)

as always, carol