Bye, Bye Tomatoes

All of the frozen tomatoes have been cooked down into sauce, save for some that I left frozen to use when I make stock. Seeds from the Indigo Rose tomatoes that Elysian brought over are fermenting.

I am trying to get used to seeing tomatoes with green insides.

The tomato seeds that I fermented and dried a few weeks ago were put into labelled envelopes for next spring. Thus endeth this year’s tomato harvest. Hallelujah.

I called the processor the other day about the pigs. We were on the schedule for next Monday, but this year’s batch of pigs has been slow to put on weight. Our pigs have always been up around 300 pounds when we take them in. This group is currently about 200 pounds each and the processor suggested we wait to bring them if we could. We’re not the only ones with underweight pigs; about half of the kids raising 4-H pigs this summer had animals that didn’t make weight in time for the fair. Many of us get weaners from the same supplier, so perhaps it’s a supply issue. Or the excessive heat this summer? Who knows.

In any case, after checking with the husband, I moved the processing date to mid-December. This is going to create extra work for him—which he says he will just deal with—because we have a pig shelter but not a barn. The pigs won’t mind the cold or even some snow, but the water lines will eventually freeze. However, the pigs should all be at weight by then. We don’t want to sell underweight pigs to our customers.

Yesterday was a sewing day for me. We were up early because the husband was pouring concrete at 8 am, so I had a head start. I have a rule that I cannot start anything new until I get stuff from last spring off the list. This is a tumbler quilt from scraps:

Having that Studio die cutter is both a blessing and a curse. It really speeds up fabric cutting, but it really speeds up fabric cutting. I have a whole plastic bin full of these 4-1/2” tumblers. Tumblers are good mindless piecing.

This is one of those “controlled scrappy” situations—my first attempt at a tumbler quilt was totally scrappy and I hated the way it looked. One day last spring, I pulled out all the blues and yellows from the bin and made myself a rule: All of the turquoise and yellow tumblers had to be first sewn to a blue (mostly navy) tumbler. The blue tumblers are either Kona or a blue print that reads as a solid.

That worked. The “solids” add some stability to what otherwise would be an incoherent mess of prints and colors, but there is enough diversity within the solid colors to keep the quilt from being boring. I had a few moments of doubt along the way, but as I got the tumbler pairs sewn into rows and put them up on the design wall, I liked the layout more and more.

The quilt currently measures 48” x 72”. I will trim the side edges even and add a border and this will be a nice twin-size quilt.

I am going to have to spend some time soon getting scraps under control, or else clone myself into a second version that sews nothing but scrap quilts. The Accuquilt cutter makes short work of all my scraps, but now I’ve got a bin of charm squares, a bin of 2-1/2” squares, and a bin of tumblers, not to mention all the strips. And the hexies. I also have two big bags of fabric pieces that need to be cut into sizes that fit into one of those categories.

I’m getting there, though. Slowly but surely, the sewing room is getting organized into stacks of projects. Each stack will get put next to the appropriate machine. Every time I finish some current UFO (unfinished object), I will treat myself by starting something else. After I got this tumbler top put together, I cut out enough supplies for some hot pads and potholders. And created more scraps, LOL.