Bounty from the garden - Aug 17 and Aug 22

Dear readers, I'm drowning in garden produce. 

This was Saturday's haul. There's tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers and one mutant zucchini. 

And then, a mere 3 days later, there was this tomato explosion. (Also, more peppers, and tomatillos.)

Yesterday, in desperation, I gave half the tomatoes to my mother, begged my neighbor to take some tomatoes (she didn't, her crop's come in too, and she's also got more tomatoes than she needs.) I also made roasted tomatoes, per David Lebovitz.

De-UFO-ing the UFOs - Dave and Erin's baby quilt

Dear readers, I'm buried in a pile of UFOs. I'm evidently in the middle of 4 makes, and I'll be perfectly honest, I don't function that way. While I'm often tempted to start many projects in a row, I am best at working sequentially - one project at a time.

When these two urges clash, inertia occurs. Nothing gets done, I'm too stressed to enter the sewing room.

As with everything in life, the solution is - unfortunately for me, who craves the easy answer - one step at a time.

And so, this quilt top, made for my friends Dave and Erin, who are about to have a baby in September. I'd finished the quilt top in July?, but I don't enjoy the quilting process, and so, it lingered on as a UFO.

Last week, I swore that I'd work 30 minutes every day on the damn thing, and get it done. It took a little more time than that, but hey - you know what - it's now done.

The front fabric is stuff I just stole from my mom's stash (don't feel bad for her, she has a lot of stash.) The back though, I pulled something from my stash - this grey cotton is lovely and soft, and I didn't really have enough of it to make it into anything else. It looks perfect in this quilt. (Also, yay, stash sew down.)

It isn't the best quilting in the world, but I'm not a good quilter, and it's a pretty good effort for me.

Unfortunately, my mother brought me a quilt top I need to quilt for her. (Trust me, this isn't altruistic in the slightest, it's one of my patterns, and she's been kind enough to test the pattern for me.) And thus and therefore, the UFO count still stands at 4. Sigh.

McCalls 6566 - Purple t-shirt

Dear readers, there's some serious non-sewing going on here. I'm sitting in the middle of a massive pile of UFOs, and I'm slowly trying to dig myself out of it. It's slow going. Let's instead talk about something happier, shall we?

Normal front view.

When I visited my cousin in New York (June), we hit up a Joann's, and bought a ton of patterns. (There was a 5/$5 McCalls sale, and well, I went a little crazy.) She then forced me to actually sew one up in her house, and hence and therefore, this t-shirt! It's McCalls 6566, the version with the high-low hem, but with the little pocket omitted.

(Antidote to procrastination. Having someone hover over you making you sew. Oddly effective, I recommend it.)

Let's talk about this t-shirt, shall we?

- I like the cut-on sleeves.

- I like the concept of the loose-fit, but I think I went too far here. This is a medium, on my next go-around of this make, I will make a small. There's plenty of ease here.

You can see both the cut-on sleeves, as well as the copious amounts of ease. (Oh, and also a tomato.)

- It turns out long! I think the front length was originally past my hip. Pretty dowdy, especially with the extra loose-fit. I cropped it so that it was slightly lower than my waist in the front, and half-covering my butt in the back, and I like this new length a lot better.

Side view, you can see the high-low hem, and it gives you an idea of the length.

- I can see this in a solid! I should definitely make myself another version, incorporating all my changes, because this would be a great basic t-shirt.

And this is the back. With the scarecrow pose, it rides up a bit higher, but most of the time, it covers about half of the jeans pockets.

All that being said, this current version, while not being exactly what I was looking for, still has a role in my closet. It's amazingly comfortable, it works over jeans, and it hides the beer gut pretty well. Love it !