Recently I made a trip to the apple orchards near where I live. I make a trip out there each fall to get apples because they are so much better than any I can buy in the grocery store. I bought plenty and like so many others....I've been canning some of them. Here's what I did early this week. The pint jars have Gala apples slices and the half pint jars have sugar free peach jam. I canned the apple slices without adding sugar too. I'm a diabetic so it will be nice to have these sugar free treats later on. I still have more apples in the refrigerator to can. I plan to make applesauce with those.

I have not been doing a lot of stitching. Just a little in the evenings. I am making slow progress on the blocks for my Rainbow Sherbet and Licorice wall hanging. I now have 2 blocks completed. As you can see, I have help when I try to take pictures.
I guess Truffles thinks she has to check out my stitching and make sure I'm doing it correctly. This happens each time I lay anything for a quilt on the floor.






Here's a picture without her interference!


These blocks are fun to stitch. The only thing I do not enjoy is working with the silk thread I'm using. I prefer to do my hand applique with cotton machine embroidery thread. DMC is my favorite. With this multi-colored fabric, I couldn't find a cotton where my stitches didn't show, so I ended up using a neutral silk thread. I hate stitching with it as it is so slippy.

Life, weather, and a quilt show

Life has been busy lately, but with lots of things other than stitching. I have continued to attend my monthly applique class, but I've done little stitching outside class. I'm determined to change that. I'm hoping things will slow down as fall comes on. I am beginning to see signs of fall with a few leaves beginning to show a little color. There are a few Burning Bushes in my neighborhood that are turning red. That's a certain sign to me that fall is upon us.

It's been raining, and raining, and raining at my house over the past 3 days. Last night we even had tornado sirens going off as there was a touch down to the west of us. At the time, DH and I weren't aware of the weather alert. We had gone out to dinner. After dinner we were going to make a quick stop at Target for a few items. As we were walking into the store in Independence, we heard the sirens going off. Store personnel told us that shopping was being suspended and everyone was to go to the back of the store and take shelter along the back wall. What a frightening experience. I was very much wishing to be home in my basement instead of along the back wall of a Target store. I must admit that the staff at Target was very courteous. They even provided bottled water for everyone while we waited. I hope I don't get caught out like that again. It was scary!

There is a quilt show in our local area this weekend. I went yesterday and snapped a few pics. There were some very nice quilts. Most were machine quilted. I only saw 5 that were handquilted. I'm sorry that I can't give credit to the ladies who made each of these quilts. I didn't think to write down their names.

This quilt was my favorite. I really like the color selection...and the pineapple blocks used with the applique. It was machine quilted. The field was quilted in the ditch. The appliqued borders outline quilted around the pieces and the filled in the background area so that the applique pieces really stood out. I saw lots of quilts with lovely piecing and applique that were quilted all over with a pantograph and that quilting actually seemed to detract from the lovely work of piecing and appliqueing. Just a personal opinion there.

This lovely quilt was hand quilted around each hexagon. My photography doesn't do it justice because it was so pretty.

I like soft colors so I liked both of these. The quilt on the left had beautiful piecing, but it is one of the ones that had all over quilting that seemed to detract from the lovely work the lady had done. The quilt on the right was made using vintage linens. I have many that my great-grandmother made. This photo will definitely provide ideas for preserving those!
The piecing in this quilt was beautifully done. It was also machine quilted, but on this one.....it was done to highlight and feature the blocks and piecing.






And this little quilt was just cute! The maker had carefully collected fabrics for the background of each block. Some little boy name Zach will probably be a very happy little guy when he gets this quilt!