WIP Wed: Garden, Polaroids, Phoenix Quilt Cause, and a Sneak Peak

It's Wednesday, and I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced WIP Wed to share my "progress.

Besides the Polaroid Picture Swap blocks (the ones above I'm keeping for myself), and a few postcards (that I forgot to take pictures of), I haven't been doing a whole lot of sewing, but have spent a few really hot hours weeding our garden this week.  We had a slow start this year, weather-wise, but with the triple digit temps we've had this past week, the garden is suddenly taking off!!  I'll be eating the first garden zucchini of the year tonight for dinner!

The corn wasn't quite knee high by the 4th of July, but it is now!

The okra is still teeny weeny, but even if I get a few skillets' worth, I'll be happy!

We have green tomatoes.

We even have baby grapes!

I think we'll have more than enough peppers too!

Our 1 year old blueberries and raspberries have yielded a few handfuls already, and we've been eating lettuce, carrots, radishes and green onions for a while now.  Beans, cucumbers and winter squash are also coming on strong.  Our chard is a favorite of the birds (so are the berries).  With food prices getting so high, and only predicted to go higher, I'm very happy to put aside the sewing and pick up the garden gloves and water hose.  With a teenage son, and another son not much younger, it's a very good investment!!



I do want to pass on one sewing cause that caught my eye yesterday.  Phoenix Quilts is a new project, started by a fellow quilter who was recently evacuated from her home in Utah because of wildfires.  She is trying to get a quilt to each of the families who lost homes in the recent large numbers of wildfires.  Since my husband works in wild land fire management, it's a cause near and dear to me.  My own parents were the grateful recipient of many donations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, after losing most of their household possessions in the flooding that followed.  I will always be grateful for the help that others gave them, and try to do my best to help others in such crisis events.  My goal is to get at least 1 or 2 quilts made for Phoenix Quilts.  You can help too!!

Finally, a sneak peak at a small project a friend asked me to do.  She loves my New Orleans Architecture quilt, and asked for a small wall hanging based on it.  The dimensions she wanted, though, just wasn't working out, so I decided to create a new mini quilt, based on another iconic piece of New Orleans architecture, the "shotgun house".  These are very narrow houses that are named such because a gun shot at the front door will pass through the whole house and out the back door without hitting a wall, as there is typically a hall that runs the whole length of it.  Here's a sketch I drew out recently.  Now I just need to start sewing it up!!

As always, I'd love to hear what you're working on, especially in the garden!!