Playing With Dirt

It doesn’t look like much right now, does it? Soon it will be twelve tiny cucumber sproutlets. In about two months they should be yielding delicious ripe cucumbers, which are my favorite thing about summer! Watching cucumber plants grow is absolutely amazing, they climb so fast and attach themselves to things so strongly - sometimes I get a little worried that they might try to take over the planet!

Also in the planting queue for the balcony: basil, lemon basil, leaf lettuce and green onions. Yum!

The Quilt Chronicles, Continued…

I finally basted the quilt sandwich together, and I’ve started quilting! Hooray! I decided to quilt in the center of each strip, in a straight line to the center diagonal, where I’ve quilted three parallel lines. Each line coming in from the side will meet the outside line on the diagonal…. like this:

I got a little frustrated with it, so I’m taking a tiny break - I really need a long armed quilting machine. All of this bulk gets a little bunched up in my tiny sewing machine. If I’m not careful, I’ll end up sewing a random corner to the back of the quilt!

Pattern Sale

Butterick patterns were on sale this weekend for $1.50 each. The top two were impulse buys. I might make another pair of jeans from the first pattern, the version on the far left. And, it might become the summer of the skirt based on the second pattern - they are so pretty.

However, I was really coveting this last one, particularly dress B. They had this dress made up in the store with a beautiful blue eyelet material. So, naturally, I wanted that exact dress! I found the blue eyelet material, but decided to pair it with a cream lining to give it a little depth, instead of trying to match the color exactly. A cream ribbon will pull the whole thing togther, and it will be beautiful to wear to a summer wedding! Here’s the fabric with the cream lining underneath:

Monster Bash!

I was thinking a bit more about these monsters, and I sketched out a few the other day while in a seminar that wasn’t particularly thrilling to me. (You might want to ignore the few random sketches and the word circled in the middle - I still haven’t gotten around to looking that up, but I swear I will!) Click on the picture for a better resolution view!

I think I’m especially enamored with the little guy that is all head, with his eyes on tentacles and the little sad face. I’m picturing him made out of some left over royal purple satin type material. Ooh, that could be a nice pillow if made big enough I think!

I also like the cyclops, as he reminds me of Mike from Monsters, Inc. Now that I look at it a little more though, I’m not sure he needs legs - maybe just really long arms that can be fastened with Velcro would be awesome.

NOM NOM NOM NOM BACON NOM NOM NOM

This was my very yummy dinner last night. It’s a repeat of one that I made for thing-a-day in February. Caramelized onions, garlic, cubed portabella mushrooms and bacon! Yum. The onions are cooked down in olive oil, then the garlic and mushrooms are added. I fried the bacon until crispy, then added it at the end to the onion mixture. It’s all served over some egg noodles, with the olive oil basically serving as the sauce. I can’t wait to eat some of the leftovers tonight!

Monsters

I’ve been seeing a lot of people making crazy stuffed animal monsters lately on the craft circuit.  I think I might start using up my gigantic bag of scraps and poly-fil to make up some of these.  They look pretty fun!  Not quite sure what I’ll do with them, but I can figure that out later!