Small Projects Progress

Notice:  This is another long post with lots of pictures.

The wrist splints are coming off today, so I will be able to get back to some serious sewing next week.  In the mean time, I have been able to maneuver enough to get some small projects completed on my clients orders.

But, I have to first tell you that while I was working on these small projects, I was busy harvesting our Roma tomatoes from the garden.  I have run out of freezer space for the tomato puree I have been making, and the tomatoes do not ripen enough at once to do a batch of canning, so I went to drying them.  Not exactly like "sun dried" tomatoes, but good enough for saving and using this winter.   I had a few pieces that did not totally dry, so I threw them in a pot with a small amount of water, and made some three bean chili for dinner last night.  Easy peasy!

This is my second jar of the dried Romas.  I still have another batch on the vines out in the garden, but will get to those next week.

Moving on to the sewing projects:

Here is the double college team baby quilt I posted about here.  The client wanted one college team on one side and another team on the other.  In this case, one side is the Nebraska Cornhuskers, and the other side is the North Carolina Tar Heels.  (I even looked  up what a Tar Heels was, and found out that this from Wikipedia:The exact etymology of the nickname is unknown, but most folklore believe its roots come from the fact that tar, pitch, and turpentine created from the vast pine forests were some of North Carolina's most important exports early in the state's history. For a time after the Civil War, the name Tar Heel was derogatory, but it was later reappropriated by the people of North Carolina.^[1]

Because the exact history of the term is unknown, a number of legends have developed to explain it. One such legend claims it to be a nickname given during the U.S. Civil War, because of the state's importance on the Confederate side, and the fact that the troops "stuck to their ranks like they had tar on their heels".^[2] )  One should know what it is they are working on, right?

The client is delighted, I am delighted, and it is off in the mail to the mother's baby shower.

During this whole interaction with the client, and ordering the fabric for each team, one of the first fabrics picked was the wrong type of fabric, meaning it was fleece.  So, since it wasn't going to be used in this quilt, I went ahead and made a couple of baby blankets and put them on my Etsy site.  If you are interested, just click on the upper right sidebar Etsy icon, and it will take you directly to my Etsy site.

Another client wants me to make her a set of college themed potholders representing the University of Oregon Ducks.  She also wants nine more sets representing the different holidays such as Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, Fourth of July, etc.  Originally she has just asked for the U of O set of potholders, so I have done those first and they went out in the mail today.  I will be working on the rest of the sets in a couple of weeks, as I have John Q's quilt that needs to be quilted.

I also finished one of the pillow shams that will go with John Q's quilt, and I will be working on the other one today.

I kept it simple in the binding of the outer case, opting not to do a flange or ruffle, the customer is just not that kind of a person.  The back closure is just a simple envelope type, making it easy to get the pillows in and out.

Lastly, I finished the "marble" bags for the sling shot's that my dad had made (more about that in this post), but I didn't get any pictures before mailing them off to the client.  My dad had made a couple of sling shots for his neighbor, and the neighbor wants the bags to hold the marbles.

Warmest...