Cleaning Leads to Finishing

The Noon and Night Quilt has been set aside, not because it has problems but because I needed to start cleaning, and cleaning led to finishing some projects that have been languishing. I put together another comforter to tie and donate to Mennonite Central Committee—it was already cut out and just needed to be assembled—but our church’s sewing group hasn’t met since March and I am not sure when or if we’ll meet in person again. I can still tie comforters here at home, but that question has been nagging at me lately. As I am the current president of that group, I should do something about it.

I made the bias binding and bound the inside edges of that Get Out of Town Duffle Bag from a few months ago. I still need to assemble the shoulder strap but the bag itself is now done.

I hate doing inside binding. I would much rather make a drop-in lining. I attached this by machine but sewed it down by hand because I think it looks nicer.

I cut out another apron as I clearly need one for every day of the week. I can’t believe how dirty I get some days. The apron needs to be put together but shouldn’t take long.

It feels good to be moving some of these projects along. In between sewing, there was some visiting with neighbors and discussions with the girls about wedding plans. My mother and I don’t want to accidentally buy the same dress for the wedding, so I enlisted DD#2’s help in finding one for me.

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Tera told me about a place in Utah that sells recycled billboard tarps. She uses them in her garden. I ordered two, 14’ x 48’, and they arrived yesterday. I’ll have the husband help me get those spread out before it snows. I needed some really heavy-duty plastic to kill weeds in a couple of problem areas and these should work nicely.

I was putting together an Amazon order yesterday—I need a good harvesting apron for picking apples and also some black batting for this Noon and Night quilt—when I ran across a company called Palouse Brand. “The Palouse” is a large agricultural area south of Spokane, and this family-run farm grows and sells lentils, garbanzo beans, and wheat berries. Their products are non-GMO and they don’t use glyphosate as a desiccant. They also partner with farms in Montana and Idaho for some of the lentil varieties they don’t grow themselves. (Lentils grow in Montana—who knew?) I was tickled to find them and put in an order for several bulk packages of lentils.

My lettuce seedlings have sprouted:

Now I just have to keep them well watered until they are big enough for me to transplant.

I think (I hope) we’re past the worst of the heat. We’ve had pop-up thundershowers the last couple of mornings and actually gotten some precipitation. (This time of year, the humidity is so low that we often have thunder and lightning, but the moisture evaporates before it hits the ground.) The forecast is for mid-80s for the next 10 days. That’s bearable. I am expecting an avalanche of tomatoes shortly. Those will get popped into the freezer and I’ll deal with them in November.