A Strippy A Week

I spent nearly all of the last week trying to finish up a quilt for Koleen, a new pattern I'm testing for her. With 32 twelve-inch blocks and 3 borders, it's the largest quilt I've ever made. I used Civil War fabrics; and although my husband and I both like the fabrics very much, the quilt looks positively plain on the design wall next to my Orange Crush, which is very bright and also still under construction. At this writing I've sewn the first plain border on the quilt top for Koleen and am still in the process of finishing the piecing for the second border.

At the live auction for our quilt chapter a few weeks ago, I purchased about 6 yards of a colorful bug fabric with the idea of using it to make some strippies to practice machine quilting. Yesterday I went to Marden's and bought some companion prints to go with the bug fabric. After working with all those bright fabrics in the Orange Crush, I couldn't wait to buy more of them; and at $3 a yard it was easy to go crazy. I bought mostly 2-yard pieces of half a dozen different fabrics for the strippies.

Today after a trip to the dentist, I spent the rest of the afternoon cutting out pieces for the strippies, and I cut out enough for 6 complete strippies, plus some of the pieces for about 7 more. What I'd like to do is make one strippie each week, right down to the quilting and binding, and then donate it back to Marden's for their Project Linus drive. That seems like an achievable goal, and it will give me some much needed practice with my Lizzie. At the rate of one a week, it wasn't really necessary to cut out so many tops today, but I was having a really good time making different color combinations. I really like this lime green and turquoise combination.

The peonies in my yard have faded and been replaced by these small yellow blooms. I have no idea what they are. They appeared on their own and could be a weed for all I know, but I like them so I left them in the garden. They don't seem to spread like the violets, so I'm okay with that! By the way, we have managed to eradicate the violets almost entirely from the lawn now, and I am overjoyed about that.

I thought how nice it would be to have a garden this summer, but we weren't about to dig up any part of the yard after just tilling it up to replant grass. Still with food prices being what they are, I wanted to grow something somewhere and decided to try container gardening. I was given a grape tomato plant at work, so one afternoon we went to the nursery and bought a couple of pots, soil mix, another tomato plant and a few herbs, and some fertilizer, then potted it all up.

We had a garden years ago, but I've never grown herbs before, so we stuck with oregano, basil, and thyme, which all seem to be thriving so far. I took this photo of the pots on Monday, and the big tomato has already grown over the top of the cage.

The hole in the side of the pot is a place to pour water into the reservoir in the bottom of the pot. These are self-watering pots, which is something I never heard of; but I thought it was a good idea for me, since I am forgetful about watering. There is a wick in the bottom of the pot, and the two ends sit in the reservoir, which keeps the soil moist. It works like a charm.