Month: June 2024

Bits and Pieces, Sunday, July 30, 2024

The palm trees are “blooming” now. I still find their “flower” fascinating.

I have been so hungry for deviled eggs for days now. And I realized that I would be fine making some with my local eggs (Chucktown Acres) that don’t have corn or soy in their feed, with homemade mayo with a tiny bit of plain mustard that uses white vinegar for the needed acid to make it jell, some finely chopped sweet onion, and, of course, organic olive oil and salt. I wanted these eggs to be plain, so I didn’t add any herbs to my mayo this time.

It didn’t take but a minute–as cooking the eggs is quick and making mayo is even quicker and easier, and now I have some to drizzle over salads and other things in my bowls, like the chicken and potatoes below. I can’t use cayenne pepper to decorate, but my deviled eggs are DELICIOUS. They really hit that hunger spot I had.

Here’s my dinner salad last night. I had made a big bowl of salad with the last of the roasted chicken, so I just took half of it for my supper and added the eggs.

I washed my improv quilt. It has a coral backing that ran when I washed it, so I was nervous about washing this quilt as there are so many light colors on the front. But so many of these fun blocks used glue, so I needed to wash it out. I put 6 color catchers in the wash and crossed my fingers (and toes) as I so love this quilt. She came out beautifully from the dryer, and now is all crinkly and cute.

Right now she is living on a chair in my tv/reading/hand-sewing little room. With different folds, different parts of the quilt show on the chair. Right now it’s the red “wheels” block. (Tara Faughnan is going to do this “block” class again starting in September. If you are interested, go to her web site and sign up for her newsletter.)

So, improv blocks joins “Happy,” where I am working on the final hand quilting of the border. See the big pillow–I found it at Costco the other day so I don’t have to use one of the couch pillows I made to get a hand project up and out of my lap, which is too low for easy hand work. I’ve not had any issues with my neck or shoulders once I adopted this pillow practice a few years back, and as you know, I do a lot of hand work. (The loose orange threads you see are from the longarm basting I did to hold the layers together.)

In line, waiting for its turn, is this recent project which is set up to be a wall hanging and is yet unnamed. You can see the orange machine basting threads, which I will remove as I work.

“Pieces of My Heart” (the neutral) is on the longarm. The colored version with the light heart is growing on the design wall, and I’ve been making parts for the “Prickly Pear” quilt designed by Annabelle Wrigley and using her solid fabrics.

This double heart pantograph is new for me, and I’ll use it on both of these “heart” quilts. I am using a soft grey here as it was better for the backing than a neutral thread. There are enough darker “neutral” blocks here to make the light grey work well.

Enjoy your Sunday!

What Is This HUGE Wasp/Hornet?

It’s the biggest darn flying wasp-like critter I’ve ever seen. Some are close to almost 2 inches long. And they have set up shop in my red roses.

It took me some time the other morning to get some pictures–without risking being stung–and some time researching with pictures to figure this one out as there are other similar insects out there. One is now moving into South Carolina, and it is a problem.

It’s a Cicada Killer Wasp. And they are not true wasps or hornets as they don’t bite or sting.

Yes, the females are up to 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 inches long. The males are smaller, but are very active as they are “guarding” the underground nest the female digs for her eggs. Males aggressively patrolling a nest location can be scary if you don’t know anything about these highly colored insects and encounter one. All one sees is the size and the waspy colors.

This picture is of the smaller male on guard. He’s very active so it took me some time to get a resting picture.

Here you can see the distinctive yellow dot on the front of the face–and the dull red markings around the head and on the legs. There are three yellow bands on the lower body, on the upper part. The rest is black. The wings are stationary and lie flat when at rest.

The HUGE females are much harder to capture with my camera. She has what looks like a stinger protruding from her rear, but it is used to sting her only prey, a cicada that she ceaselessly hunts down as she uses it for food for her eggs. If one tries to capture her and brushes the stinger, it can leave a very mild sting, but that’s all. Research says that the sting is less than that of a mosquito bite. Mostly these insects eat sap and nectar.

Here’s a quote from the informative link below:

“Female adults often dig their tunnels in a backyard sandbox, a sand trap on the golf course or in a nice sandy picnic area outdoors. Lawns, gardens, flower beds and athletic fields are other preferred nesting sites. They excavate noticeable amounts of soil around their tunnel entrances and create unsightly mounds. Large soil particles are removed with mouth parts and then shoveled through their legs in a dog-like manner.”

I now remember that I saw these piles of dirt obviously excavated from my rose garden beds last year. At the time I was puzzled by what dug out the dirt. A frog maybe, I thought? I just put the dirt back with my trowel and called it a day.

But…

Here’s one of the dirt piles I found this morning–and look how well the Asian Jasmine (which is not a jasmine) ground cover is spreading now. That is a LOT of dirt for an insect to remove with her mouth and shovel backward with her legs.

The adults only fly around for about 2 months, and now that I know what they are, I’ve enjoyed watching their antics in my roses. I’m not worried about having them around. At the very least, their tunnels and underground nests will aerate my very very poor soil.

Please don’t kill these harmless creatures. Instead, enjoy the show and the other benefits they provide. You can’t miss them. They are HUGE.

https://njaes.rutgers.edu/fs040/#:~:text=Cicada%20Killer%20Wasps%20have%20a,the%20rear%20section%20(abdomen)

I Love This Quilt

Last night was the monthly Charleston Modern Quilt Guild meeting. It was a lively event that produced a room full of visiting, laughter, and frequent clapping celebrating various projects being shown.

Jean Craig, president of the Charleston Modern Quilt Guild, and her husband recently hiked a mountain trail whose length is 76 miles.

Home

Here’s a quote from Wikipedia: “The Foothills Trail is a 76-mile (122 km) National Recreation Trail in South and North Carolina, United States, for recreational hiking and backpacking. It extends from Table Rock State Park to Oconee State Park. It passes through the Andrew Pickens Ranger District of the Sumter National Forest, Ellicott Rock Wilderness, Whitewater Falls, and Lake Jocassee.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foothills_Trail

Jean is a quilter, so guess what she came home and made:

That’s Jean on the left, and Rick Sanchez of Rickrack Room (also an amazing quilter who has a longarm business) is helping Jean show her quilt. Near the bottom, Jean depicts the “foothill” mountains they walked.

Here’s the back:

I think she said that the quilt is a gift for her husband, who said this event was a “level 2” event. Jean explained that a level 1 event is clearly fun things like parties. A level 2 event is something that you know while doing it that you’ll like it all a lot more when you are done. I love that!

I spent part of yesterday afternoon ironing the backing pieces for the neutral “Pieces of My Heart” quilt top AND matching up the print. I’ve had this cute fabric in my stash for a long time (thank you Betsy Maislen for showing me this fabric).

I bet you have to look hard to see where I matched the print:

And today is another day to fill with fun Level 1 events! One of such events will be putting this backing and its top and batting on the longarm.

**Here’s a link to the method I use to match backing prints:

Match a Print Seamlessly On Your Quilt Back

Bits and Pieces, June 25, 2024

Hello readers,

Where does the time fly to? It’s almost July.

We got rain last night–and a lot of thunder and lightening, so I have not had to use my new little water sprinklers yet. The rain gauge had 1 inch of water in it this morning. Yeah!

I’ve been sewing steadily in the afternoons, and I make myself quit at 7 pm to walk. Yesterday was very humid, but a nice breeze developed in the early evening so the walking wasn’t too bad. It was hot yesterday, but it is summer. We got spoiled with our coolish weather these past weeks.

Here’s the design wall right now:

Yes, using the colored 3 1/2-inch squares of Cotton+Steel (original designers)/Ruby Star Society and making the star from neutrals is working out nicely. The neutral version with the red heart is ready for the longarm, with batting cut and backing panels cut, but the panels need to be lined up and joined–not to mention ironed.

Annabelle Wrigley’s “Prickly Pear” block from season 4 of The Color Collective, made with her fabrics, is a challenging block. Those two blocks (16 inches each finished) will repeat to make 4 across and 4 rows or 64 inches square. There are so many creative ways to organize how to lay out these blocks, but I’m going just plain.

The bright blue triangles on the background are creatively organized as well, which is bending my mind as when the spatial genes were passed out, I didn’t get any. Right now the most frustrating part is how to press each block. I ordered more fabric yesterday as I was lacking enough fabric for the curved triangle pieces and the field fabric to make the whole quilt. And I added a bit more of the blue just in case.

I had a visitor on the porch the other day: an Anole lizard, which is very common here. I’ve always loved this little lizard.

This creature can be tamed if captured apparently. I tried once as a young mother with children, but that anole didn’t like being captured. This lizard is also an insect eating machine, so I’ll happily leave him/her in the wild. This one can also change its colors from shades of brown to green. How fun is that? It isn’t camouflage though, just a mood thing.

Here’s a really fun link to more info about this cute lizard, with good pics that illustrate much about it. The pic of how a male blows out the bright orange pouch under its throat is especially interesting. I have seen one do that.

9 Things You May Not Know About The Cute Carolina Anole That Lives In South Carolina

I passed this tree on a recent walk and did not recognize what it was. It was tall, with beautiful foliage. The closest I could come with on my phone app was that it was a water hickory, which is in the walnut family of trees. The other guess was a pecan, but I know those trees and this wasn’t one I’m pretty sure. Also it was in the wetland on the side of my path.

https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/carya-aquatica/

We were treated to a rainbow a few days back, but didn’t really get any rain from all the swirling clouds. Just a sprinkle for a bit.

The ditch is the intermittent stream that runs from the nearby wetland; it runs through our property. The mail kiosk is on the left of this picture.

OK folks, it’s time to get about the day. I dug out the big Lantana on the side of the house that wanted to be a tree yesterday and am replanting with two cone flowers (echinacea) and a yellow daisy (rudbeckia) I lucked into at Home Depot yesterday. (I did check with a local nursery before buying at Home Depot.) The roots from the Lantana had already reached a long way in all directions!!

Bits and Pieces on a Wednesday

The leader/ender quilt is done, and it’s very cute. The pattern is “Pieces of My Heart,” and it is on the “all people quilt” web site. This lap size quilt will be 54 by 63.

The binding will be this Riley Blake stripe. And I found a great video of how to match up the strips on bias binding. It is super easy. And one doesn’t need glue. Here’s the link:

The 3 1/2 inch squares are all from my bins of cut-up Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star fabrics. I have two bins–one neutrals and one colors. The neutral bin is still half full, LOL. I think it is breeding in the dark of night. So I guess this project of using up this fabric is still ongoing.

Hmmm… I’m wondering how this little quilt would look made with colored squares and a low-volume heart. So that’s the new leader/ender project.

I’ve now finished–for the moment–the sewing project Cathy Beemer has been teaching us at our monthly Sit and Sew for the Charleston Modern Quilt Group.

I say “for the moment” as I would like to make a 60 by 60 quilt using this fun and creative method–especially now that I’ve more or less finished with the learning curve to make it.

To remind you what a bigger quilt would look like, here’s Cathy’s quilt, hot off the longarm and not yet bound. Cathy has taken many classes with Maria Shell, and you can see that influence here. (I love Maria Shell’s work.)

I installed a hanging sleeve as I’m seeing a wall hanging here. I sew my hanging sleeves with my binding. And I bound (bias, of course) with aqua, which is working well I think. I used a “request” lighter batting as I’m now going to hand quilt using the big stitch method and 12-weight cotton thread. I learned recently that one can install binding and sew it down with hand quilting, which is nice as one wouldn’t now have batting fluff everywhere. I basted the quilt sandwich on the longarm with easy-to-see and easy-to-clip loose orange thread.

I used a backing piece I had in my stash that has some of the same colors as the front.

Note that I do not sew down the label or the hanging strip until after I have finished quilting in those areas of the quilt.

No rain yesterday, so I watered early evening last night. And I got frustrated enough with my available water sprinklers and how they don’t work well in small yard areas that I spent some time this morning ordering two that should work better.

And, here’s a fun supper salad made with a leftover beef pattie and cooked potatoes, among other goodies, like fresh dill.

LOL, I see I left a sticker on the red pepper. That’s another rant–the glue on the sticker is super strong and takes pepper with it when one tried to get it off.

Daily, I set up my supper when I’m organizing my noon dinner.

Have a great day!

An Adventure, With Scissors and Knives

Last week, I met Ken Woodley, owner of Steel on Stone Sharpening, after making an appointment with him and letting Waze take me to his shop in a little town west of me, off of highway 26.

I rounded up ALL my scissors, which badly needed sharpening–and I took three knives along as well–the two little paring knives and the treasured Japanese knife a former Virginia neighbor (a WWII war bride) ordered for me from Japan.

Here’s Ken, methodically working through the pile of scissors and knives. He especially liked my kitchen scissors–as I do. I use them all the time, but it was getting hard to spatchcock a whole chicken as they were so dull. And my sewing scissors…oh my! They so needed attention.

I even took my cheap paper scissors to Ken–and he didn’t fuss at all.

Ken came to South Carolina from the Boston area, and he knew Maine well. So we had a delightful conversation about Maine.

Here are all my sharpened scissors and knives–now back home.

In Maine, someone who sharpens tools is called a “grinder.” Here, Ken told me, he is called a “cutler,” though he said the term “sharpener” is used more often.

Ken has all kinds of equipment to handle whatever comes to him. And he is so patient and thorough. He even sharpened my little snips and the small scissors I use with hand sewing (green handles)

Ken also travels to local farmers’ markets and quilt shows, and I got his card from the spring Cobblestone Quilters show about which I blogged.

The drive from Mt. Pleasant to Ken, up in North Charleston, wasn’t bad at all. It only took me about 30 minutes.

I’m sure I’ll visit Ken again in about a year, and I’m so happy to have found him. So are my scissors and the three knives I took to him.

*I’m not sure how I missed almost a week on the blog. I’ve been sewing, yes. And watering grass and outside flowers as it has been very dry and it is warmer now. It took me forever to figure out how to control the spike sprinkler that can do a full circle, but…she persevered. Our houses are close together and my yard is very small, which is fine, but watering does have to stay on my grass as neighbors are also watering. Plus, we pay for water/sewer here.

My Improv Quilts

The genesis for me for making improv quilts came from three sources: a Jen Kingwell quilt called “Long Time Gone”; encountering the early modern books by Freddie Moran and Gwen Marston where they collaborated and where they introduced the idea of keeping a “Parts Department” of blocks ready to be used; and the joint work of a newly formed “modern” quilt group in Camden, Maine.

I did blog posts on my improv and formative quilts from the above sources for improv work, so I listed the links below.

Here’s my “Long Time Gone” quilt, dated October 9, 2018. I added the piano key border which I would not do today as borders are not often seen in a modern quilt. This quilt could pass as a “sampler,” but also as an improv quilt made with blocks in a “parts department” bin.

If the link doesn’t work, you can search on the title to get to that blog post. ***If you right click on the title and open the link in a new tab, the link worked for me.

Turkey Tracks: My “ `Long Time Gone’ Cotton+Steel” Quilt

Here’s the first improv quilt I tried on my own–using blocks from my own “Parts Department.” This quilt is named “Parts Department Party,” and is dated May 2019.

*open link in a new tab.

Turkey Tracks: “Parts Department Party” Quilt

“Wild Thing” came from a Mt. Battle Modern Quilt Guild challenge based on the long-time “Bee Sewcial” group that posts to Instagram. Each month the designated member of the Bee Sewcial group for that month asks the other group members to make a block to their specifications–which includes design concept, colors, and sizes. The group works with solid fabrics. Many of this group’s quilts have won significant awards.

I chose a palette of bright, clear colors and made the key color the spring green color you see here. I also made extra blocks to fill in the holes that I needed filled in order to make the quilt top come together. Here’s the top:

Here’s he finished quilt top. Note that I used a clam shell groovy board to quilt it, and I do like that traditional quilting on this modern quilt.

The link to the blog post might not work, but it is called “Wild Thing” Quilt.

https://wordpress.com/post/louisaenright.com/13808

Here’s my “Improv Blocks” Quilt that I just finished. I used the blocks I made in a “blocks” class taught by Tara Faughnan. And I kept the same fabric palette during the class, hoping that would provide some consistency for a possible improv quilt.

https://louisaenright.com/?s=%22Improv+Blocks%22+is+done

I also made a quilt inspired by Gwen Marston and Freddie Moran’s work AND by how Debbie Jeske of The Quilter’s Table blog used and altered this idea: “Liberated Wedding Ring, made in the fall of 2021.

“Liberated Wedding Ring” Quilt

I seem to have a “thing” for wedding ring quilts…

My Parts Department is full of interesting blocks these days, so there will be another improv quilt, maybe this winter.

And Tara Faughnan will be teaching the improv block class again, starting in September.

I’m tempted.

Chucktown Acres Farm and Store

I am never so happy as when I am on a farm.

And Saturday, I visited Chucktown Acres Farm and Store, which is about 30 minutes north of me and is right off of highway 17.

I have been buying their eggs at Local Jo’s Natural Foods. And, their ground beef mixed with organs. But I’ve wanted to go out to the farm and their store for some time.

There is a good website: chucktownacres.com. And you can sign up for the newsletter which keeps you up to date about farm products and practices. Here’s a blurb from the website:

“Chucktown Acres is a working, regenerative farm just outside of Charleston, SC. We raise grass fed/grass finished beef, forested pork, soy free eggs, and pasture-raised poultry. We are farmers who have a passion to grow bio-diverse food that heals our land and heals the people around us.”

The ride up was uneventful, and traffic was very light. A long drive leads one to the farm buildings and farm animals. As I got out the car, which I parked in the shade of big live oak trees, here’s the first thing I saw after passing the pasture of cows.

The sweet farm house was to the right:

And the store was in a long, low building facing the entrance drive:

The owners were warm and welcoming, as was the colorful sign on the building:

Inside, the first thing I saw was the eggs I wanted, eggs from free-range chickens who are NOT fed soy. I am loving these eggs which do not give me any reaction from my histamine intolerance. There are also eggs from the Storey farm which is on the land where my son and DIL have bought a building lot. And I bought one of the Storey frozen whole chickens which I roasted yesterday–and enjoyed chicken meat with a lot of taste and meat that didn’t dissolve in my mouth like the mass-produced commercial chickens bred to be enormous in a few months.

Inside are long freezers filled with farm meat products from this farm and others in the area and made products like pasta.

There is a refrigerator with raw milk and dairy products and fermented foods and items that need refrigeration.

On the weekend, when the store is open, there is freshly made sourdough bread:

The chickens are free range and are guarded by a friendly and special prize guard dog puppy: a Komondor.

Working Komondor

The cows were resting in the shade.

The pigs ran to see me, grunting a deep grunt as they came, and when I offered no food, they retreated to doing the pig things they had been doing.

There was a purple Martin house, and I have not seen one of these in some years now.

I will leave you with this iconic picture, but know that I will be returning to this farm and store in the future.

It’s Salad Weather

And the markets are full of wonderful berries. I am addicted to this mixture of organic blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries. (I drizzle the strawberries with a bit of maple syrup to sweeten their sourness as they are often picked green so they can be shipped.)

The other day I only had a bit of grilled steak in the refrigerator at supper time, so I fried an egg in a bit of butter to go on top of the salad. The corn is from some cobs I steamed. The base is a mixture of hearty baby greens. And I splurged on some fresh dill to put on my salads. The milk is, of course, raw milk, upon which I have thrived for over 20 years now.

This supper salad’s protein is one of the stuffed green peppers I froze a few weeks back. I added some of the steamed broccoli I cooked at noon. The onion bits are from an organic Visalia.

My new reverse osmosis system has been installed in the kitchen, so I now have what amounts to purified drinking water–which means it does not have any minerals either, and we need the minerals in water. So I’ve been drinking sparkling mineral water about once a day–poured over ice. Am I succumbing to the southern need for ice in drinks? It seems so…

There are several brands of sparkling mineral water here. I got a carton of Pellegrino at Costco about a week ago.

Today I’m cooking a small lamb rack I also got a Costco. I love lamb, but recognize that either one does or doesn’t.

“Improv Blocks” is Done

What a journey!

This quilt started with Tara Faughnan’s six months online “Blocks” class in the fall of 2023 and into 2024. Tara presents beautiful fabric palettes, but this time I had the idea that I might want to make an improv quilt with my work in this class–so I chose a large palette that I kept intact for the six months. The palette, I thought, might be able to provide some coherence down the road.

I posted about the blocks along the way so many of you saw that process–which was so much fun. After the class ended, the blocks sat on my design wall for months as I moved around the larger pieces and tried to make an improv quilt come together.

Finally, I had what I liked. Here’s the first view of the resulting top. I used Kona silver as my field fabric. I hated the borders though–and there were places where some adjustments were needed to make the quilt lie flat. The first step was to take off the borders.

Here is the top without the borders. Yes, I liked this top much better now. And while I had it on the floor I measured and corrected to make the top absolutely square before putting it on the longarm.

I wanted to try using my longarm to do straight line quilting down the length of the quilt, so I put it on lengthwise–and made sure my machine, with the channel locks set in place–would quilt a true line with the correct distance between lines every time.

Yeah! That was working really well…

…until it didn’t. My channel locks were not holding properly.

So, I took the quilt off the longarm, took out two lines of stitching, and set up all sorts of tables and an ironing board around my domestic machine so I could finish the quilting there. It took three days! (Meanwhile, my Innova dealer was already coming to take the wheels off my long arm as it was too high for me, so I put in a call to him about the channel lock issue. Yes, he came and all is well again.)

The problem with using a domestic on a big quilt with straight line stitching is that the fabric can (and does) get out of square as the walking foot pushes the fabric in a way that the longarm does not. But, I coped with trimming, and the quilt is…GORGEOUS!

Here it is on the floor, but this pic is distorting the quilting I think.

So I put it on the design wall upstairs to try for a better picture.

For the backing, I found a gorgeous coral from Figo at Five Eighth Seams that works really well with the Kona coral in my palette. And it makes this quilt I already love so much so lively and fun.

I will need to wash it to get out all the glue in the blocks. And I already washed the backing and all the stash fabrics. I want to show it to my two local quilt groups first though. I am a little hesitant about the washing as I used color catchers with the backing, and the dye did run more than a little. So, when I wash this quilt, I will use lots and lots of color catcher cloths in the wash and probably cold water.

There are two projects on the design wall and ironed fabrics waiting to be used in a third quilt. One of these projects is a leader/ender project, and that is working out well in lots of way to be shared later.

“Improv Blocks” is begging to be touched and used: