when life gives you zucchini -- and other profitable enterprises

it had been a long time since I made pickle relish, and we were in the very last jar of that batch

and since my zucchini plant turned up it's toes and died on me, I had to send out a call for donations

(I know, who does that?!)

fortunately, someone my daughter works with had an overload of large ones, so over the weekend I turned them (and a few other ingredients) into a 10 jar batch of fresh pickle relish

that will hold us for a while

work on the backing of the leaves continues

last week I said there were 7 leaves -- actually there are 9 -- and as of last night I had finished 8 of them and I'm working on number 9

as is usual when I get to this point in a project like this, I'm getting impatient with the speed at which it is getting finished -- I want to be done so I can move on to the next project!

must be patient and not ruin the finishing by getting in a hurry

the leaf project was not the only bead work in process

these three sample pieces are done now too

I plan to use these as examples on an Etsy listing that will involve doing custom "memorial" pieces that will involve the person placing the order sending me a file of whatever they want put under the glass

we'll see if that gets any orders

and then there are these

I made them for my daughter because I got my hands on a package of these cute charms and she and I have an longstanding joke about someone dropping a house on the witch

I made her this wall hanging a few years ago as part of the ongoing quilt gifting

I think she'll like the earrings

 

so last week I thought I was ready to quilt this piece

but there was something about it that I still wasn't quite happy with even though I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was

so I did other things, thinking that I might figure it out

 after a conversation with a friend, I pulled the photo of the piece into my photo software and changed it to a black and white photo

right away I could see that the dark gray on the right hand side and the really big white patch on the left hand side were distracting

the black and white version of the newly changed top confirms my feeling that it's much better this way

NOW it's ready to quilt

this piece is ready to quilt too

and this photo is a good explanation of why this piece was one that is hand stitched, not fused since it's wider than my design wall!

since the truck piece has moved on to the next stage at the sewing machine, I have started working on the bottom edge of the fire piece

it's nearly ready to be attached to the sky -- looking pretty good

the city is the next piece that is up on the design wall

but when I started thinking about the materials that I want to use for that tall building I decided that I need to do some testing before I do a lot of work and then have a materials failure

so I'm going to test those materials by creating a smaller piece that is just a section of the piece with a bit less detail

if what I want to do works well, I will finish this piece and set it aside to donate to the SAQA auction next year

this week's activities include a meeting with other quilters, a trip to the dentist, a critique meeting and a family gathering --- never a dull moment!