Quilting - June 4, 2025

The lavender quilt is coming together . . . on paper.  I'm trying to figure out the best way to use the fabric before I put scissors to it.  There's only a yard of the fabric that started it all, and that's enough to do what I want to do with it, but not enough to do the whole quilt, so I'm alternating it with another block design to make the quilt bigger.

I have about decided that the alternate block will be a hexagon flower - a yellow center with 6 lavender petals.  I'll applique it onto background fabric with some decorative stitching.  I can't decide whether to do 7 honking big hexes or a whole bunch of little ones.  Hence, the drawing it out on paper.  Yesterday, I used some left-over squares from the wedding quilt to make a practice flower.  The first attempt turned out badly, but I watched a video and learned how to do it.  I'll have to mark seam lines and stitch points on every. single. hexagon, and that will be a pain, so I expect the flower will be a big 6-petal flower.  I might hand-piece the hexagon flowers.  There will be 24 of them, but that seems like nothing compared to the all the hand-stitching I've done this past 6 months, and I can do it in the recliner while I watch Antiques Roadshow.  ;)

I went out shopping for cake-decorating stuff this morning, specifically fondant, for #3's birthday cake.  I bought a chunk of white fondant and a chunk of pink fondant and a few bottles of gel food coloring.  I am going to color the white and see if I can make little gymnast figurines.  The pink is to drape over the cake.  In all my years of baking and crafting, I've never fooled with fondant, and I'm expecting problems.  But I've painted and know how to mix colors, and I've molded clay and made armatures for people and animals.  As long as the fondant, itself, doesn't act a fool, I think I can figure this out.

But not today.  Today, I've got to get in the vegetable garden.  It's not too late to plant the purple hull peas, but it will be, if I don't get on it.  I've already warned The Husband not to get comfortable when he gets home from work, 'cause we're going to the garden.  I'm going down there early to run the tiller over the rows, and if I'm not too hot and worn out after that, I may just go ahead and plant the peas. If I can get that done by the time The Husband gets home, maybe he can haul wood chips to the garden with the tractor instead of planting peas.