Bow-Ties, Tomatoes And SPIDERS

 In my quilting lifetime I've heard many quilters say they don't like scrap quilts.  How is this possible?  To me they are works of art even if it's a just a bunch of squares sewn together.  The joy of a scrap quilt is seeing the different prints. 

Let's be honest, they are a pain to make.  It's understandable why someone would not like them for that reason alone.  Digging through the scraps to find the right size fabric pieces. Pressing and cutting tiny pieces.  It takes 10 times longer to make a scrap quilt.  Cutting for this quilt would be much easier if I only had to deal with one dark color yardage and white yardage.  It would still beautiful but not as interesting.  This is literally a pain in the neck but I'm loving it!  Even the mistake of not paying attention to the directional fabrics makes me a smile.  My neck is stiff and sore from looking down, pressing and cutting fabric.  Whatever is causing it, it's worth a little discomfort and the visit to the chiropractor later this week.  I love seeing the vintage prints playing well with the newer prints.  The calico floral in the middle  and the one with the arrow are both from the 60's or 70's.  I still have about one yard of both.  They were purchased at an estate sale years ago.  How do I know they are older?  Width of fabric is less than 40 inches and the weave of fabric isn't as "smooth" as todays quilting fabric.

EDIT 8/22/24  The print with the arrow is from the 80's.  Confirmed by Facebook friend.

The 25 red blocks were made on Monday night.  Some of the fabrics used are from my earlier days of quilting when I didn't starch the dickens out of my fabric.  I chose to use them as is, just press.  Well, that was a mistake.  As we all know starch helps in many ways.  It makes piecing and cutting easier and more accurate.  And it stops fraying.  Fraying can be a really bad situation when you have a white background fabric.  Those tiny red strings could show through the white background fabric and be visible on the front of the quilt forever.

From this point on all fabrics will be starched.  A little time consuming but worth the extra work.  The rest of the red prints have been starched, pressed and have been waiting patiently for me to return to the studio.  There's a total of 96 different red prints.  That includes the blocks in the above picture.  The quilt requires 900 bow-tie blocks.  Every color but black will be used in the quilt.  So I will need

100 of each color. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown and gray.  I don't have 100 different prints of each color.  Low volumes and larger florals will need fill in the gaps.  Of course I may end up using a print more than once.  Not desirable but if necessary I will.

Hopefully today I'll be able to get back in the studio and make a few more blocks.  Yesterday I didn't have any stitching time due tomatoes needing to be preserved.  We have a bumper crop of tomatoes this year in the garden.  I wasn't going to process anymore tomatoes.  A good rule of thumb when preserving is a two year supply because next years crop may not be as good.  Best to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.  Our Roma tomatoes didn't do well this year but I cut off the bad bug spots and used them anyway.  I'll never plant them again.  They may be good for sauces and salsa but they require too much care and chemicals to be worth my time.   And I don't do chemicals in my veggie garden.  100% chemical free!

How long did it take to process all of these and clean up the kitchen?  Eight hours!  Tomatoes take so long even when you do what we like to call rebel canning.  Now, don't get all preachy on me but I do an old fashion method for tomatoes called Open Kettle canning.  It was the way I was taught by my mom and granny.  This means I don't water bath or pressure can tomatoes.  The process is to have sterilized hot jars and hot tomatoes.  Just add the hot tomato's to the hot jars.  If you're interested in this process I found a video to show you the method. 

I ended up with 29 pint jars of salsa, 8 quarts of tomato juice and 2 partial pints that will be used for veggie soup this evening.  The next topic is spiders.  If you don't like spiders this would be a good point to leave.  Thanks for dropping by!

A few weeks ago Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville posted her daily quote. If you don't follow Bonnies blog you're missing out.  She's an amazing quilter and teacher.  I've been reading her blog almost daily since 2005!  Anyway, her daily quote gave me a good chuckle because I could relate.  There has been many times I thought a wad of thread on the floor was a spider.   

But this week I had a run in with a wolf spider and at first I thought it was thread.  For 3 or 4 days this spider would come out, scare the dickens out of me and run faster than Forrest Gump to evade capture or death.  

Wolf spiders jump and they are fast.  They get HUGE.  This one is just a baby.  They get about 3 times bigger than this, if not bigger.  I've seen them as large as my hand.

  If you're thinking I could have caught it and put it outside you obviously have never seen a wolf spider.  They are almost impossible to catch due to speed.  The slightest movement spooks them and they flee.  You would think since they are so big they wouldn't be able to hide very well but they can get in the smallest of spaces.  They don't typically bite humans but they can.  And really who cares, they are scary!  So I went into fox mode. Moving as slow as humanly possible until I was close enough to make my move.

Game over!  I win!

This post is being link up over at Quilt Fabrications for Midweek Makers.  Hop over to for quilty inspiration!