Lovely long weekends!

We have been having just the loveliest long weekend here.  Mr Shush had a great list of gardening chores, including (of course) planting all the tomatoes we have grown from seeds.  We have quite a few, including some we haven't tried before: Brandywine Yellow, Green Zebra, Black from Tula, Tompom, Sugar Plum, Big Red, Indigo Rose and our old favourite - Black Krim (the best for pretty much everything except looks).  Anyway, they're all snug and happy in the garden now ready to grow, grow, grow.

And because we're planting this season's tomatoes, I felt obliged to do something with the remainder of last year's crop left in the freezer.  So I am now a smuggy pants with six jars of yum yum pigs bum tomato pasta sauce. Oh, and I went all out for housewife of the year by cooking up some of the loquats too.  I tried a lime and loquat dressing (definitely recommended) and a loquat BBQ sauce (I'll report back in a few months when we open it).

In between all that I did some sewing too.  (Phew, I know, right?!  I'm sure you feel overwhelmed and inadequate in the face of all that achievement.  I'm not going to tell you it only took a couple of hours, and that hubby had to do all the clean up in between sorting out the garden.  And that the rest of the house looked like a bomb site for most of the weekend.  Let's not ruin a good thing.)

I was thoroughly sick of not getting any sewing done for aaaaaages, so I got out my Briar Rose charm pack and put together a baby quilt top.  I've had this idea for a while of getting through some simple baby quilts, and this is my first one.  Super basic, quick to make, stash busting, and great for pressies when the need arises.  I'm thinking of a series of 10.  Perhaps before I get to number 9, I'll do a cool little button! 

Heather Ross Briar Rose charm pack quilt.  Quick and easy

It's hard to believe, but I've never done a plain sashed charm quilt, so here it is.  I struggled with the layout - I wanted to shade one colour into the next, but that didn't really work with these charms, so I went low volume to high volume.

I do love me some orange - blame hubby - it used to be my least favourite colour.

I'm going to back it with some pink candlewick, so there'll be no need to use batting.  I think the whole thing took a couple of hours from start to finish.  The biggest problem was the layout.  I'll give all the details when it's quilted and finished.  Beginners - this will be the quilt to get you started!

Witch costume (size 4 - length size 6 - I'm starting as I mean to go on)

Finally, Princess has decided that Halloween is the next big thing.  I think she needs to move to the States, because here it is no big deal - although she does get to have a dress up day at day care.  I was informed that she wanted to be a witch (she was Thomas the Tank Engine last year, so I think she's got the hang of it a bit more!).  We have a large hat with a sparkly buckle to go with the dress.  Too cute.

I found the awesome faux velvet with glitter cobwebs at Spotlight, where I bought the pattern - my first since sixth form at school.  It came together pretty quickly though - all this quilting has certainly improved my sewing times. 

How are you all?  What have you been up to?  I'm going to head back into my work cave for the next week, so I hope you get to have some lovely sewing time.