Tuesday, August 28, 2012

QFK prepped and a quilt-in-the-making?

Last night at 10:00PM, I shut the burner off of the tomato sauce; I was no longer interested in waiting and waiting for it to finish reducing and THEN waiting another 40 minutes for it to hot-water-bathe.  The ideas shared were wonderful and you can BET I'll give those an attempt the next time I need to reduce anything.  Wow!  5 hours last night.....
and then another 3 hour this morning for it to finish reducing to a consistency I was happy with.  Eight total hours.  That's a long time!  So, YES, DEFINITELY I will give the suggestions shared a fair shake the next time.
In the end, 9 quarts are being added to our shelves of canned goods.  

While the sauce was simmering away, I spent some time preparing a backing for the Cars quilts-for-kids top.  
In addition to the Lightening McQueen scraps that Nancy sent, she also had about 1/2 yard of a coordinating Cars fabric in the box of scraps she sent me.  It worked PERFECTLY for the backing; simply made a bit wider with some red sidebars.

{{stir, stir, stir inbetween}}

One wonderful outcome of making these quilts -- I pieced together a few scraps of batting that had been collecting from my bigger quilt finishes.  

{{stir, stir}}

Since having my Juki98 short-arm and frame set up, I rarely quilt on my Bernina anymore.  But these are so small, and the suggested quilting is a simple cross-hatch, so that's my game plan.
I basted them up, and they now lay waiting on the ironing board.  

{{stir, stir}}

These extra spinning star blocks (from Carolina Christmas) have been catching my eye every time I walk past my orphans which are still scattered all over the floor.  A straight-set would work.. but I think I'm going to see what I can do with an on-point setting.  Coordinating colors are being tried out in my mind;  I AM a sucker for purples/oranges/greens lately.  Sashing is a possibility as well.

{{Stir, stir.....it was READY!!!!}}

My time downstairs ended, and the sauce was processed.  The rest of my day run-down:
Lunch was made;  school supplies were organized.  Cassie was dropped off to make the bus-time for her Cross Country meet tonight; Caitlyn, Candace and myself went shopping for some odds-n-ends.  I got home and searched some of my math websites to find some week-1 "fun" projects.... and now here I am.  

Paul nor myself will be trekking over to Cassie's meet tonight;  it's over an hour away; it's already begun, in fact, and Paul won't be home for another 45 minutes from work.  And me...?  Last Spring, I had signed up to work tonight's Volleyball match not even THINKING that Cassie would be old enough and want to go out for Cross Country.  In fact, I signed up for ALL the home Volleyball matches; and sadly almost all of Cassie's CC races conflict with the home VB games.  I am hoping to find someone to switch duties with, and if not... :{  At least I'll know better for next year.

4 comments:

Alycia~Quiltygirl said...

I LOVE that cars quilt!! Great idea. Hope you get to switch out with someone, XC is fun to watch! Go Cassie!!

Amanda said...

I think you're all going to have turned orange by the end of the winter with the amount of tomatoes you're going to be eating. Perhaps you should now go ahead and make a bumper batch of bolognaise sauce to freeze in portions to save even more time when you're back teaching.

Nancy said...

I knew you would come up with some nifty thing to make with those scraps. They look awesome!!!!

Ann Marie @ 16 Muddy Feet said...

I would be canning me some homemade spaghetti sauce with all those tomatoes you had. We usually make a double batch when we make it as it is, and then freeze half of it for a few months down the road. I LOVE those purple stars you have hanging out. Can't wait to see what you do with them.