Teal Shadows

My quilting goal for 2022 is to finish at least one WIP list project each month. February got away from me. But heck, it's a short month, right??? I've made up for it in March. Teal Shadows is my second finish for the month.

I remembered buying a sealed plastic bag of teal fabric squares many years ago, but I did not remember that I bought them because my dear friend Shonna was battling ovarian cancer until I looked up the story behind this quilt. I also didn't remember that some of the blocks in the package were hiddeous. Or not even teal. It's a good thing we write down our quilt stories. So much would be lost if we didn't.

I DID remember that when I later bought teal charm packs to go along with my teal squares, I had squares in two different sizes. I'd always wanted my 3D illusion quilt to be different from all the others I'd seen. I remember being very pleased with how my alternating four- and five-inch squares looked when I finished this flimsy back in 2016. I think Shonna would have loved it.

Now that the simply imperfect quilting is done, too, I feel like Shonna might have been looking over my shoulder while I was taking photos. I think she might have been smiling.

I wanted the shadows to look as if they were truly behind the blocks, so I quilted them very densely in a solid teal that almost perfectly matched. I wanted the teal squares to look puffy, so I didn't do much stitching in them with the last of my King Tut Arabian Nights. I ran out of YLI Alaskan Twilight while I was quilting the background so went in-person thread shopping for the first time in more than two years, to no avail. So I finished up the quilting in a pastel ocean mist solid that beautifully matches the background fabric. I used a solid turquoise thead that matches the Cosmos backing on the entire back. My solid thread colors are Signature and Gutermann.

Then came the *fun* full three nights of weaving in all 404 thread ends. No, I didn't count them, other than the background threads. I multiplied the number of illusion blocks (49) by eight, which is how many thread ends I had to weave in on each one, then added in the 12 background thread ends. Gosh, no wonder it took so long!!! Not my favorite part of the quilting process, but it's gotta be done.

This quilt top is so old, I no longer have any of the Toscana I used for the background and shadows, and I used up all the Cosmos backing leftovers as backing for one of the butterfly quilts I made for my grand nieces a few years ago. I didn't want to buy more fabric for the binding, and I wasn't in the mood to hunt through my stash for something that might work. I momentarily considered assembling all my teal scraps and probably would have taken on that challenge if I wasn't trying to make up for not finishing a quilt in February.

I placed the quilt on the floor to begin trimming off the edges when I suddenly realized there MIGHT be enough Cosmos backing all the way around to fold it over into a self-bind. Intrigued, I immediately began pinning, and a swarm of memories of the quilting bees I used to attend in the church basement with my grandmother when I was a child came flooding back.

We used to get together almost every weekend to make a baby blanket for an expectant mother. Someone had the layers all set up on a wooden frame, and we'd sit around the quilt to stitch by hand from the outside in, rolling it up as we went and becoming more tightly packed against each other as the stitchable portion of the quilt shrank. If we didn't have the packaged (nylon or satin?) blanket binding, we'd roll the edges over and stitch by hand. I didn't know anything about strip binding until the last 20 or so years, and I never machine-stitched a fabric strip binding until Crazy Mom Quilts published her wonderful tutorial.

I think I still have a package of that vintage blanket binding somewhere in the basement. I remember learning how to zigzag Wright's satin-finish binding onto a baby quilt back before the turn of the century. I confess: I prefer today's binding methods! But, oh, what a joy it was to self-bind Teal Shadows!

I probably would have finished the quilt in an hour or so if I'd machine-stitched the edges. But my mitered corners turned out so perfect, I decided to hand-stitch them. Then I decided to begin hand-stitching the binding, just to see how it looked. I liked it so much, I spent the next four nights hand-stitching all the way around the quilt. I might have been able to finish another quilt that is ready for the longarm by the end of this month if I hadn't squandered my time with a hand-binding. But I enjoyed going back to my roots, and I absolutely love the way this quilt turned out, mistakes and all.

Linking up with Alycia Quilts.

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Out with the Old

I always try to put my indoor plants outdoors too soon. Every year. Never fails.

I had so many tomatoes still on the mature vines in my container garden last October, I decided I'd bring the huge pots inside and let them winter in the basement. I kept grow lights on them. They produced plenty of blossoms, but the basement just wasn't warm enough for new little tomatoes. However, most of the blossoms didn't fall off. So I thought perhaps they would set once they got some glorious 70-plus-degree spring out on the retaining wall.

Things were going well in March as I moved seven big pots and six little pots in and out each day (because the nights were still too cold). A warm but vicious wind took out three of the big, mature tomato plants. I replanted those pots with new seeds. April brought a bunch of snow, so everything had to stay inside for a few weeks again. I began putting all the tomato pots, including the new seedlings, on the porch and on the retaining wall during the day as soon as moisture began falling in the form of rain instead of snow. (We even had our first lightning bolts of the year!)

The mature tomato plants apparently had had enough. They did not survive the second day, which featured a garden-boosting gentle drizzle nearly the entire day.

I was somewhat bummed at first, but they'd been damaged by the windstorm, too, so it would have taken them a while to begin producing if I didn't change them out. Plus, there were those pesky little white flies, which apparently didn't care for the cool basement but celebrated and reproduced heavily once they got some outdoor weather again. They don't seem to mind the wind at all. And somehow, they hang on!

Lizard suggested I dump the plants AND the soil when starting over so not to spread the white flies to the rest of the porch containers. So out went that dirt!!! Now I have four new varieties of tomatoes planted from seeds (beefsteak, giant Belgium, Roma sauce and black plum), and I should be able to leave the pots on the porch now for the rest of the year (or at least until the first overnight frost of autumn). Because it could take the seeds a couple of weeks to sprout, an overnight freeze at this point won't really hurt anything. (Although I will keep an eye on the weather just in case we do get a really chilly night.)

I've decided I'm not going to try to grow tomatoes in the basement again next winter. We did get a beautiful flower about once a week in the rail planters I'd also brought in, but overall, especially with all the physical therapy going on in our house, the basement experiment resulted in mostly greenery and just wasn't worth the time, effort and space.

I got more mushrooms than flowers all winter long! But heck, they can be photogenic, right?

The seedling tomatoe plants, of course, came in at night until it was warm enough for them to thrive outside 24/7. All were planted from seed on the porch last April. None matured enough last year to produce any blossoms. Each managed to survive my inattention while Lizard was in the hospital for 14 days during the hottest days of August. (My neighbors watered them for me.) All the seedlings are on the porch now, and all but one seem to be happy. It's even warm enough now to keep the amaryllis plants on the porch.

The smaller tomato pots spent the winter next to the living room window. They did not begin blossoming until a few weeks ago, but they appear to be healthy. The jury is still out on whether I will bring them in again this winter. Given that tomato plants are productive only a couple of years, it might be worth starting over each winter. So the pots may come in next September or October, but with fresh soil and new seeds.

I ended up having to start the pepper plants I brought in for winter over again, thanks to spider mites. One new plant began producing blossoms in about February, but I've had only two pepper so far. We have wintered potted pepper plants next to the living room window for going on 12 years now. This was the first year I can remember such a small winter harvest. I had to buy peppers at the grocery store twice during the winter!!! (I used up my frozen stash.)

Last week I decided to start the porch peppers over again, too. Just in case the white flies had taken up residency, I dumped almost every pot on the porch, flowers and veggies alike. It's been years since I've started outdoor pepper plants from seeds. This year's planting includes Golden Macaroni, Sweet Banana, Ancho/Poblano, Serrano (our favorite), and Joe E. Parker Anaheim peppers.

I don't know what was in most of the flower pots. Now they are planted with Balloon Flowers, Brachycome, English Daisy and Stokesia. The bare parts of the ground garden are planted with cheap dahlia bulbs, cheap gladiola bulbs and six varieties of cosmos (Daydream, Candy Stripe, Picotee, Pink Pop Socks, Sonata and Sweet Sixteen). For the last three years or so, I typically have nothing but sunflowers in August. Perhaps this year I will have a full spectrum of pinks along with the sunflowers that are already beginning to poke through everywhere, including between the French drain rocks and in the driveway seams and cracks!

Columbine, Delphiniums, Lupine and Spiderwort are my garden favorites. I have three of each that come up again every year, thank heavens! This year I have a few volunteers I've spotted here and there, and a couple have been transplanted because they got started in no-grow zones. I also sprinkled new Spiderwort and Lupine seeds strategically throughout the ground garden. I've still got one more package of delphinium seeds I intend to plant somewhere in my new landscaping.

The bunnies won't stay out of my raised-bed gardens, so the Young Men from my church will be building a second tier of raised-bed gardens to install above the existing beds tonight. They've planned this for several weeks now, and it has snowed every single night they planned! Today we're just supposed to get rain. We'll soon see if May can keep the snow up in the mountains...

I'm wondering if I can incorporate a few more raised-bed gardens into the tiered landscaping I'm trying to achieve. But a new deck will have to come first. It will be much smaller than the one we had to pull out shortly after we bought the house. The old deck had not been maintained and was beyond repair. I ended up going through one of the steps. So we removed the entire thing and have been exiting the backdoor via a homemade brick stairway that is far too dangerous now for Lizard.

One of the biggest replacements in our lives this spring has nothing to do with the garden.

Our trusty, loyal 4 Runner is gone. My son was beyond thrilled to adopt the 433,000-plus-mile, 22-year-old time travel device. I'm happy I didn't have to sell it, and my son promises to take photos for me of the odometer each time the zeros turn.

He sent me a message on night one, after just sitting in the car for a couple of hours, sharing all the memories my Yota lightspeeded into his soul.

You know, I looked it up, and there are not many fourth generation 4Runners on the road, still running, with that kind of mileage. Plenty in the 200,000 range. But only a handful above that. Mine, oops, I mean, HIS is one. Everything I saw said if you're going to run up the odometer that high, Toyota is the brand you'll need.

I don't know if the new (used) wheels will provide that kind of longevity, and boy, is it difficult to get used to no clutch! Nevertheless, I do think Sooby Doo is a good car, and I think it will serve us well.

Take a gander at the newest member of the Snowcatcher family!

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Friday Funny

Do you feel old? Click here to see how old you feel.

Next time I whine about an unkind comment or email, please nudge me back into reading this.

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Toy Story

Last summer I stumbled upon a fun blog post on a Wordless Wednesday that brought back so many fun memories, I thought I'd continue the game.

Bridget at "And Miles To Go" talked about her favorite childhood memories in "The Attic of Forgotten Toys" and asked readers to tell about their favorites. At the time, I remembered hours upon hours of Spirograph designs (which you've got to admit look an awful lot like snowflakes!!!) until the bright ink colors ran out, never being able to win a game of chess against my dad, and cassette recording my favorite songs from Radio Station KOA in Oklahoma City very late at night because that was the only time I could pick it up deep in the desert of southern New Mexico. On Saturday nights, I used to get a kick out of listening to Wolfman Jack. Google that!

This was long before Nintendo, Atari, Walkmans, home computers, cell phones, ipods, and perhaps even soccer! Just teasing. But we truly had no soccer leagues in the small town where I grew up.

I remember toys that weren't favorites but that still swirl with warm memories of growing up surrounded by six younger brothers and sisters and always having a playmate, no matter what.

I had a giant doll named Tess, I think, with a pull string on her neck and a small record player in her side. Each tiny white or pink record, smaller than today's CDs, played one or two sentences. I had to lift her dress to change the conversation from "Happy birthday!" to "Would you like to come outside and play?"

I had tiny dolls in perfume bottles. Remember Little Kiddles? Oversized heads of strawberry- or lime-colored hair scented with the flavor with which they were colored.

My little brothers played for hours with their Erector Set and Lincoln Logs. But their favorite pastimes were digging holes in the backyard, playing in the dirt and building forts.

My middle sister had a doll named Chrissy, I think. We pulled her ponytail to make her hair grow long. My sister's favorite playtime activity, however, was tipping all the silver metal Oscar-the-Grouch-type trashcans throughout the neighborhood and placing boards over them to run and jump over. She went on to become state champ in the 100-meter high hurdle. Three times.

As I was remembering our playtime creativity, I realized I, too, just like my brothers and sisters, adored non-toys more than all the store-bought toys we ever had. I have still yet to outgrow my crochet hook and my camera. I hope I never do.

I had an Easy Bake oven, and I loved making up recipes. (We couldn't afford the tiny commercial packages of cake mix, cookies and cupcakes.) I loved doodling with bright-colored felt-tip pens. When my mom got a sewing machine in 1974, I pretended it was mine. How I loved to design clothes for my Midge doll, Barbie's freckled redhead friend from back before the trendy dolls had bendable legs.

For my 16th birthday, my dad gave me a CB radio and later said he'd created a monster. My most favorite of every childhood thing I owned, though, was my Polaroid camera, a Super Shooter. Eight shots per film pack. I learned to budget tightly from a very early age. I learned instant gratification, too! Snap the photo, count to 60 and voila!

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for giving me grown-up toys to cherish all my life! And thank you, Bridget, for sending me off on a fun journey back in time!

What about you? What were your favorite toys? Did they play a roll in your character development or the hobbies you still enjoy today?

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