Second post today

I wanted to get permission from J-MT before I posted this picture and she OKed it. She sent it to me yesterday. This is the Montana weather that is coming our way, but luckily we won't get quite this cold. Isn't this a beautiful picture of the last roses of the season? Also Mary-Kay asked me "Do batiks from the 90's look dated or do they look just like today's batiks?". I feel that they were much grayer at that time, rarely having any bright colors in them. The one exception to that is the blues. They have always been fairly bright. Even though you can still buy ones that look similar to the 90's ones, more of them are in the brighter range. The brighter ones were available after 1998 if I remember right. I will have to be very careful when choosing out of my newer batiks to finish the project I showed yesterday so that the old ones won't look too dull.

All of a sudden there is color

It seems like the trees have all decided it is time to change colors. Yesterday I saw some really pretty trees and wished I had taken my camera. This is the view out my front door. This one is looking north a bit.
And this one is the redbud tree right outside my front door. The view out my back windows is the all yellow redbud trees. They will lose their leaves fast.
This is all the sewing I got done over the weekend, the preemie layettes. Our church sewing circle is today and I had taken these pieces home last time to do the serging around the edges and add the ribbed neckbands.
It's a little gloomy out this morning however they predicted another hot day.

The other "found" box

This is what was in the other "found" box in the fruit cellar. I have looked and looked for this one. I knew where it was before I moved things around in the basement. I thought it should have been with my other paper piecing things but it wasn't. I started this one in the late 1990's so it is mostly batiks from that era or earlier. I have enough more units pieced to make 2 more star points and a start on a third one with just 9 units per star point. The picture on the package is a bigger star. I'm thinking about what else I could use these pieces for. The family reunion went well yesterday. My dad was the oldest one there and my mother and my dad's cousin followed. The temperature was in the low 80's and the flies weren't too bad. We rent a building at a forest preserve that has a fireplace that has been used on some of the colder Octobers. This time we had the windows open to let the warm air in.

Its another beautiful day today. My friend J~MT promises me some of her cold Montana air but it looks like we won't get it until Thursday because of the buckle in the jet stream. I know the cold weather can't be far away but it's hard to think of it when it is so warm here.

Last days of flowers

The end of summer garden is looking pretty scraggly. There is still some color contrast though. Some of the asters are dead and dried up and some are in their last stages of blooming. I would like to leave the seed heads for the birds, but that also means I am pulling out volunteer plants all spring and summer. I will cut some and leave some I guess.
The only sewing I did was the serging on the edge of the preemie blankets for our church project. We supply a local hospital with preemie layettes.
It is a beautiful sunny morning and it is supposed to be 80 degrees for 3 days in a row. I don't know if this qualifies for Indian Summer or if that follows a frost.

Cross stitch

I owned a quilt shop in the 1980's and we carried cross stitch supplies too. Last night I was going through the books and patterns that I had saved so I could decide which ones to send to a missionary who is reaching women through needlework.

Here is a pattern that I made several times. I thought I would make them into gifts for friends. The date on my piece is 1988 and I have 2 more somewhere. I'm only 20 years late giving them to someone.
I liked this one so well I bought it twice. I loved the Prairie Schooler patterns and even have books 1 and 2. I don't know if they are still a company or not. The designs are more country or primitive than my decorating so I never had a place to hang the ones I did. I can decorate with their Christmas designs though. I'm off to work again today. Tomorrow is the family reunion. My dad (94) and his cousin (90) are the only 2 left from their generation. I have talked my parents into going this year. I doubt if the reunion will continue when the cousin is gone.

Maybe a fix

My friend Diane mentioned in her comment yesterday that maybe I could mix some Kaffe fabrics in with the fossil ferns as I increased the size of this Starburst Mosaic. I had some squares leftover from the last quilt to put up on the design wall. I like the 4 on the left but not the 4 on the right. That means I need to pull the most saturated prints and leave out the spotty ones. I think this is what I will do and make it at least 2 rows of stars bigger all around. The center part is 24" square so each row increases the size by 6".


I pulled out a purple batik that had orange squares in it and cut some of them out and pinned them to my Sept. Journal page. I needed to get the orange into the other areas to bring out the butterfly and flower center colors. I have to go to work for a couple days so I will stare at this each night and decide if I am ready to finish it.
The sun is shining this morning so it has to be a good day.

More found items

I was looking for something else when I spied this box on an upper shelf of my fruit cellar. They used to build fruit cellars into homes and retired farmers built my house in 1953. I imagine they probably had food in there. I have quilting supplies in there. Anyway, I found this box and now I have another guilt trip facing me. I used all Fossil Fern fabrics and have this much sewn together.
Here are the rest of the pieces. Now I have to make the decision: is this piece going to be bigger or will I just use those pieces in a different quilt.
I started my September Journal page but I'm not sure what I want to add so it will probably simmer for awhile.
We had rain yesterday and it is gray this morning but the sun should come out this afternoon. We are supposed to have 80 degrees on Saturday, the day of my family reunion.