Fair Time

This year we entered more items in the AV Fair than last year. I entered two quilts and we entered canned goods and fresh vegetables. Warning lots of pictures!

Here are my two quilts:

Cartwheels Quilt

Easy Strawberry Fields Brick Quilt

In fruit and vegetables we had 15 entries.

Japanese Eggplant 3rd place

Yellow Cherry Tomatoes 1st place

Large Tomatoes

Yellow Pear Tomatoes 3rd place

Tomatillos 3rd place

Sunflowers

Roma Tomatoes

Red Pear Tomatoes on vine

Red Cherry Tomatoes 1st place

Yellow Zucchini Squash

Cantaloupe 1st place

Hubbard Squash (very ugly) 3rd place

Zucchini Squash green

Watermelon 2nd place

Pumpkin

Canned goods we had 8 entries

Apple Butter

Tomatillo Salsa

Nectarine Jelly 2nd place

Orange Marmalade 

Pomegranate Jelly

Applesauce 1st place

Apricot Jam

Raspberry Jam 1st place

Easy Strawberry Fields Bricks Quilt

This quilt is the quilt that took forever.I first began this quilt in September of last year. and finished it just in time to enter it in the fair this year. The quilt is called Easy Strawberry Fields Brick Quilt and is again based on a project from the Moda Bakeshop. I was really excited about the Strawberry Fields fabric line coming out and bought the fabric for this quilt first. I have made several other projects with it since.  It began with 10 inch squares, a layer cake of the print fabric.

These are cut in half making a brick.

A white square is attached to each brick then the bricks are sewn into rows. The rows are then attached together. The op of this quilt did not take too much time to create. My issue became that I was intimidated by machine quilting a quilt this size. The top sat for awhile and I ended up quilting a larger one in the meantime. I then decided to sandwich the quilt and baste it. I then had two baby quilts to get made with the deadline of births. So this quilt waited a little longer. I finally began quilting it and broke my free motion foot for my sewing machine. It took a few months to get a replacement but finally I was back to sewing in June. At one point I looked at my stitches and realized the tension was off and had to pull the stitches out of about half the quilt and redo it. Eventually I did finish it last month and quickly put the binding on and dropped it off at the AV Fair. Of course I did not take a picture of the completed quilt but did get one of it hanging.

I really like this quilt, the colors are warm and the pattern is simple but pleasing.

Painting

My quest to paint the interior took a longer break than I planned. However with taking a week of vacation at the end of July I decided I should dedicate one day to painting my bedroom, the next room on the list. I wanted a blue/grey color that would help make it a peaceful room. After researching paint and consulting Consumer Reports (now available online at my library!) and other reviews I decided to go with Behr Premium Plus Ultra. This paint included primer so I was interested if it would in fact go on in one coat. Choosing a color was a real challenge, eventually I went with Cubmerland Fog. Once I bought it I thought it was going to be too light, then when it went on the walls too dark, basically I kept going back and forth thinking I picked a totally wrong color. 

Here is a look at it first going on. You can see the contrast between the old color that is on the walls and the new.

A look at the larger wall. There are holes all over the house where over the years residents have added satellite services and there are a lot cables running along the outside of the house into random spots, I have been working on removing these. There were only a few spots to patch in this room.

Katie of course stripped down and got to work was well. 

I painted the base boards blue as well. The plan is to replace the floor with lamanite in the next few months, the base boards will also be replaced and be white. The trim in the room was left alone until this happens, then it will get a fresh coat. Here is a new wall and an old wall:

Al together the whole project was completed in one afternoon/evening. The paint really did only need one coat and covered the walls well, I am really satisfied with this paint.

Here is a sort of before and after:

Tutu Time

Katie has a few tutu skirts which she wears all the time at home. I have given thought to making her a tutu but had not actually done it. This last weekend we caught a great sale at the fabric store getting fabric for Katie's Halloween costume and I noticed tulle at .89 cents a yard, a deal not to pass up. I let Katie pick out six colors and got two yards of each. There are many web sites that show how to make tutu's, I decided to go with the tying method. I took three colors (purple, blue and white) and cut them into six inch strips along the width of fabric. I then cut along the fold line, basically cutting it in half. I measured half inch elastic around Katie's waist, sewed it and began looping the tulle. There was enough tulle to go around twice which makes a very full skirt.

Here is the waist band.

The complete skirt.

Katie and Olive in the yard, she put it on as soon as I finished it.

Picking tomatoes in the tomato forest.

The tutu was a quick project, it took about half an hour in total to finish it. The next one is two shades of pink and black and she will be set for tutu's for awhile.