Last Sweet Days of Summer

August 31, 2016 by Candy Fullaway · Leave a Comment (Edit)

Dear August,

How did you get away so fast? I’m still waiting for those lazy dog days of summer where I sit in the shade, sipping iced tea while doing a little appliqué. It’s such a cool fantasy and I dream it every year. Then life happens and school starts. Hey August! I want you back!

Okay, now for a little visit with reality. What actually happened during August was a day at the air show, a two day class with Sidnee Snell, (to see her wonderful work, go to sidneesnell.com, it’s really cool), a week with my mom in Southern Oregon and after a few days home, my son, daughter-in-law and their Labradoodle Finn, (age 8 months) came to visit for a few days. Sunday I canned salsa. Yesterday, I capped off the month by defrosting the freezer in the garage. It’s life, my friends and I can’t spend all my time in the studio.

With fall just around the corner, I want to show a couple of my favorite fall patterns.

Harry’s Halloween came about because of the cool pumpkin and broom theme fabric.

There are wonderful fall and Halloween fabrics out now, just waiting to be the theme of your quilt. All of the center is squares or half square triangles and can be a great stash buster.

Autumn Leaves is a 3, 6, 9 quilt which basically means that you make some blocks and put them together any way you like. It all fits together because the block sizes are all divisible by three and you put in coping blocks wherever you need them. The quilt above is bright and busy because I find fall to be those things. Use your favorite fall fabrics for a more serene look, if that pleases you.

We invite you to visit our Shopping page for a little, well . . . shopping.

The class with Sidnee Snell was really fun and a lot of info stuffed into two days. About three quarters of the time was spent learning how to use Photoshop and Illustrator to simplify and posterize a photo and then create a quilt out of it. We practiced on a pattern of Sidnee’s and I finished the top a few days ago.

This technique has a lot of potential. I’ll post a picture of the coffee cup after it’s quilted. I just hope my notes from the class make sense so I can do more.

Southern Oregon is a bit of a trip in the summer. Days in the 90’s and hundreds are the usual thing. I grew up there and keep telling myself I’m used to it. Here’s a little tip: 105 degrees, even if it’s a dry heat and you’re “used to it” is still awfully hot. I did get a couple of cool pictures.

I have to ask my mom the name of the flower on the left. It’s a good sized bush that’s climbed up a fence. The honey bee at the center top was too busy to come out and get his face in the picture. The hydrangea on the right is such a cool color. I’m not much into pink, but I love that shade.

My squash crop is going to town. I also planted two of the three kinds of peppers that go into my favorite salsa recipe as well as cucumber.

Sadly, my tomatoes are not ready, so I had to buy some at the farmer’s market to make salsa. It’s fun having lots of the ingredients come out of our garden. The only thing about salsa is that there’s a whole boat-load of chopping to make this much salsa.

Just one zucchini plant and one yellow squash make so much squash. Must be time for four kinds of zucchini bread!

I’m almost finished with the appliqué on this top. The piecing part went together quickly and the handwork isn’t hard, just a bit time-consuming as handwork tends to be. I found the pattern when I was cleaning out quilt patterns and inspirations that I’ve torn out of magazines over the last fifteen years or so. This was an insert in a magazine and I decided a few weeks ago to try it. ( I think it’s a Fons and Porter pattern, but it’s gone missing. It’s around here somewhere and when I find it, I’ll pass on the details.) I love the purples and oranges together and it’s a nice hanging for early fall.

I missed the year-end meeting of my small quilt group as I was at my mom’s, but I posted a picture on Facebook (Mother on a Broomstick Designs) to show them off. All of the blocks are from Tula Pink’s book “100 Modern Quilt Blocks.” Each of us was assigned a color group and provided five fabrics to the other members and chose five blocks from the book. Each of us made at least 60 blocks (several of us did more). What we wound up with was pretty diverse and totally beautiful. They’ll all be quilted this fall (some overachievers are already finished) and will be shown together early next year.

Finally, Toby and Ella had a great time with their houseguest, Finn. At eight months, Finn is full of energy and finds that he likes to run with the big dogs. Toby (who’s almost 13) doesn’t do a lot of chasing around. He prefers the basic bark-off. It’s noisy, but nothing gets knocked over. Ella, on the other hand played chase around the house and through the mud after the sprinklers went off. I was amazed at how much dirt came off those two during the obligatory hose off.

Toby’s taking the week to rest up.