A week of tomatoes, sewing and circles

Gosh, the week sure has flown by! The weather has been pretty hot, and I've tried to stay inside as much as I can. Today, Hubby did his "every other day" garden thing with his tomatoes. All our neighbors benefited today, and tomorrow the doctor's office will get some, too. Aren't they all so pretty? There's about 5 different varieties there, including some heirloom ones that are my favorites.


I spent most of the week behind the sewing machine or on the other end of a sewing needle. I managed to hand sew the binding completely on the Kitchen Sink quilt. The one thing left for it is a label - why I didn't make one for it at the same time I did my other two is beyond my memory.

The second and last circle class was Saturday, so I spent most of Thursday and Friday preparing for that. We had a lot of fun, and both of the students had all twenty of their circles complete before class began. Of course, they needed to make another 20 in class, so unfortunately, their quilts are not to a where they can be photographed yet. The "girls" assure me that they WILL finish them, though. When they do, I'll post pictures of them for sure!

In the meantime, here's a little trick to get a pretty cool background or even an entire quilt, just by making four patches. You end up with bias edged squares, but if you handle them carefully, you can manage.

We started with 6.5" squares of darks and lights, and made them into four patches. Then when they are done, take a 9.5" square ruler, and cut half of them on one direction of slant, and the other half on the other slant.



When you are done, here's how they go together:


Does this look familiar in some way? Well, golly, I just couldn't stay away from my Cherry Limeade. If you look close, you might see a couple of surprises in my "cups"! The border will have to wait until I return from Tennessee on Friday. Between the AQS quilt show and my genealogy sleuthing, I'll be one tired, but very happy camper!