A Quilting Reader's Garden

I'm Late, and Later Still

to post for Thursday and Friday - ah, me - such is life. But I've been puttering along in this very warm August in SoCal, and now it's Sept 1. Some say I have it good - at least I don't have humidity with our 95-100 degrees like some parts of the South. And I'm praying for all in the path of Hurricane Dorian.

On the quilty side, I've been struggling to make the pieced units for my applique quilt. Yes, there are four - one for each corner and so far I'm struggling to make them the right size - 3 1/2" unfinished. I need nine for each block. I made a sample block with cut pieces - didn't come out too hot - when I sew them together I would lose the points - ugh.

I made it in the fabric I want to use for the blocks, but since this didn't work, I'm changing to scraps.

Tried smaller seams - not working. Then I decided to foundation piece the teeny pieces .

One came out nearer to 3 1/4" unfinished size and the other I don't know what went wrong - look at that top triangle on the right - Sighhh.

Why wasn't this working. Sat back and started to think thru the process. I went to print another sheet of templates when I noticed that my printer property was set to Fit to Frame. Could the setting be causing the problem? So I printed one with this feature off and one with the feature on. Made the units above - still not 3 1/2" square - arghhh.

So went back to where I made the templates - EQ6. I brought up the square and printed the templates from the program instead of saving the page to a file. There! It worked! I made the square and got my 3 1/2" unit. WOOHOO! And here it is:

Since I had measured the side of one template and it was 3 1/2" I was pretty sure it was going to work so I used the actual fabric for the block. One down, four to go. I have a different unit for the four corners.

To keep me sane I kept looking at some photos from my last trip - something soothing, flowers of course. I was going to show you these Thursdays, but that didn't happen. Hope you like them.

beautiful tuberous begonias

lovely geraniums

gorgeous dahlias

giant hibiscus

sunny and bright - all from CSU's Test Fields in Fort Collins.

This one's from my kitchen garden. These 8 naked lady stalks followed the sole one two weeks before.

I'm linking to Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop?, I Like Thursdays, and Oh, Scrap! Go on by, gentle readers.

Some of This; Some of That

What with adding borders to three baby quilt tops and adding a row to another baby quilt top, I've used 1.31 yds from y stash - yeah! Net YTD out: 45.81 yards.

I've sat down a couple of times this week and hand stitched on my Anna's Garden block - just have a wee bit more to do. Got in three days of stitching. Then it's time to prep another to hand stitch during TV time.

Below I"m share some photos from my trip to Fort Collins. It was too short. Next time I plan to add a day or two.What beautiful country! I fell in love with that high valley (9,000 - 10,000 ft).