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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

Been spending the last couple days marveling at coast redwoods, the largest trees on earth 💚 If i had a bucket list this experience would have been on it. #trees #california #forests #nature

A trio of unbelievably large trees with deeply grooved bark dappled by the sun reaches toward the sky and their green canopy

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

Got this #quilt top done a bit ago and it's sitting aside while I decide what to do with it. The pattern is a simple nine-patch block made with blue and gold shirts and a navy duvet cover. I actually found a gold bedsheet in good condition I intend to use for a […] [Original post on sunny.garden]

A quilt top comprising two inch squares of navy blue alternated with groupings of light blue, medium blue, and gold. The arrangement of the blocks creates a secondary diagonal checkerboard pattern of the medium and light blues overlaid with the navy and gold grid.

A closeup of a section of the quilt revealing that the navy squares are a solid color while the other blues and gold are patterned dress shirt fabric.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

I haven't made tomato no ohitashi in years but I flipped past the recipe this morning and decided it was time since we are drowning in cherry #tomatoes More in alt text. #JapaneseFood #Gardening #GrowYourOwn #SeedToTable

A view down into a Pyrex glass measuring cup of a double-handful of red cherry tomatoes and slightly larger yellow tomatoes. They have been peeled after a 30 second dunk in boiling water then straight to an icewater bath.

A view down into a plastic container with the same tomatoes marinating in a hot bath of 300 ml dashi, 15 ml soy sauce, and 15 ml mirin. When they have cooled they will go in the fridge to wait being brought out as a savory, umami snack or side dish.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 23/08/2026

Over the weekend I went to a garage sale that advertised it had a box of postcards. I bought it. It was $12US. I came home with 620+ postcards. Many suck, but at less than tuppenceUS each who cares! #postcrossing #thrifting #GarageSales #postcards

A coffee table covered in piles of postcards futilely sorted by almost random criteria. One shows a late nineteenth century magic lantern plate of a boxing skeleton.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 22/08/2026

First post on new server. HI! Canning #tomatoes again today. Twenty-one and a quarter pounds only yielded eleven pints because these #Heirloom#tomatoes have so much core, green shoulders, and cracking. #gardening #organicGardening #SeedToTable #Canning

Two stainless steel bowls heaping full of large, red tomatoes. Their skins are splitting because I just gave them a bath in boiling water and then cold water to prepare them for peeling. Behind them is a stack of a couple dozen empty pint canning jars in boxes.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 12/08/2026

My first Oranzhevyy Slon Minusinskiy #tomato (Minusinsk’s Orange Elephant) isn’t super pretty but at 1.161 kg it’s a handful. Don’t know yet if the flavor is any good. #gardening #SeedToTable #organicGardening #tomatoes

A normal sized human hand holding a very large golden and orange tomato with some cracks and scars

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 29/06/2026

My latest #quilt top. All men's dress shirts again. It's called "Gnomon" after the sticky-up part on a sundial that marks the time with its shadow. I'm not sure how I want to back and quilt this so I'm letting it simmer in the back of my mind while I work on […] [Original post on toot.community]

A pieced quilt top made of various shades and patterns of men's dress shirts. It has ten columns and nine rows of 6" by 9" blocks. Each block is a lighter background with an acute triangle pointing upward at various angles from several different base positions. There are eighteen different blocks each repeated five times with different fabrics.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 06/06/2026

Kind of a disappointing end to my latest quilt. I had to resort to hand quilting it because after struggling through a multitude of settings with three different walking feet on two different machines I couldn't get it to stop bunching up after behaving nicely […] [Original post on toot.community]

Closeup of a quilt with 6 inch squares alternating a black tattersall (I think?) and pink with smaller squares of opposite colors in the middles. It is quilted with a shiny number 8 cotton thread in a dark pink with big (probably too big) stitches.

Closeup of a square on a test quilt sandwich with the black tattersall on the outside and a purple square in the middle. Several lines of machine stitched quilting in the dark pink and a couple in yellow topstitching thread cross the block in both perpendicular directions and look very cool with more color showing on the top of the quilt than the hand quilting provided.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 31/03/2026

I don’t want to go home but I’m ready to go home. Its as simple as that. #CostaRica #Travel #Nature #PuraVida

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 13/03/2026

Here's the quilt top I pieced on my computerized Janome machine and then assembled with my new vintage Singer. All thrifted fabric. I want to back it with dark fabric close to the blackish one on the top. No luck so far as the search continues. I may just […] [Original post on toot.community]

A quilt top composed of 110 squares in eleven rows and ten columns. The squares are alternating dark, black-looking fabric either as the frame for a smaller central square in various shades of pink, maroon, and purple or as the the smaller square in the other colors.. At the bottom of the image you can see part of my sloth socks where I'm standing on a chair to take the image with my phone.

A closeup of the quilt top showing the piecing better and revealing that the dark fabric is actually black with lines of tan making a plaidish pattern in it.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 07/03/2026

Loving the new old vintage #sewing machine I picked up for when my new new computerized machine is getting maintenance. This Singer Slant-o-Matic 401A was built in 1960 and runs like a dream. And who doesn't love anything with "o-Matic" in the name? I used it […] [Original post on toot.community]

Illustration from a vintage sewing machine manual showing a machine with a complicated looking dial and the caption "The Slant-O-Matic--the greatest sewing machine ever built!"

A side view of a vintage sewing machine showing the needle and presser foot tilted toward the front of the machine at a slant.

A sort of beige vintage sewing machine sits behind two trays of accessories and sewing feet and also a manual for the machine.

A vintage sewing machine manual that reads "Singer Slant-o-Matic 401. The Singer manufacturing company." It has wide green and red stripes on an aged pale brown paper background

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 18/02/2026

Got to see my first ever American Golden-Plover the other day in #Hawaii! This must be a juvenile or non-breeding adult because it lacks the striking black face, chest and belly. #birds #birding

A plump shorebird stands in shallow water. It has grayish legs, a mostly pale underbelly and gray, dark brown mottling on its back and top of its head. There are also a scattering of golden feathers that give it its name. It has a black beak and a round black eye.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 17/01/2026

Nine thrifted shirts and a technique I made up myself (but probably isn’t original) and I’m almost finished with this piece I’m calling “Storm at Oxford.” It’s machine pieced and big stitch hand quilted with variegated #8 perle cotton and measures 42”x48” […] [Original post on toot.community]

A quilt composed of squares containing various shades of blue and gray creating a swirling pattern radiating out from a light blue circle. Heavy hand-stitched lines mimic and emphasize the swirls of the piecing. Colors do not align and create a secondary squared pattern atop the swirls.

Closeup of squares of curved piecing showing the large stitches

Closeup of the blue, oxford cloth circle made of four quarter circles showing the slightly rippling surface of the cloth

Closeup of a sample/test piece made before the quilt showing a quarter circle of oxford cloth. A cluster of French knots have been embroidered on the oxford in white and a closely-matching light blue

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 03/01/2026

Finished my paper airplane FPP #quilt recently and am already well into the next project. Except for the backing which I don't like enough to show it's all thrifted and salvaged fabric. Each plane is ditch stitched on my machine and then the "speed lines" are big hand stitching. #sewing #quilting

Rectangular modern quilt with twelve horizontal rectangular blocks, arranged in two columns and six rows, each featuring a stylized paper airplane pieced from coordinating fabrics, and finished with a narrow blue binding.

The airplanes appear in a range of colors including greens, blues, pinks, yellows, reds, and purples, with each plane made from three related shades to suggest folded paper layers.

Backgrounds behind the planes are highly varied: some are tone‑on‑tone prints in lime or grass green, others are cool blues and teals with abstract patterns, and several are deep red with small scattered motifs like dots or swirls.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 30/11/2025

[Alcohol] A while back I started making a wee bottle of pre-mixed #martinis stashed in the freezer per an article suggested by my husband who follows some #cocktail people. I’m liking the chilly result. I was making them with Lillet Blanc which produced an […] [Original post on toot.community]

A typical martini glass on an ugly corian counter in front of a tannish backsplash below a nice red wall. But I digress. The glass is garnished with a metal pick holding two submerged and frankly forgettable olives. The real star is the clear, colorless cocktail containing lovely long, pointed shards of ice that will disappear in less than a minute. A lesson in impermanence to be sure.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 10/11/2025

Trying my hand at some big stitch #quilting on a small project and I’m really enjoying it. It’s a free FPP pattern from Quiet Play quietplay.blogspot.com/2013/04/up-i… that I modified for my design. The outlines of the plane motif […] [Original post on toot.community]

A quilt block of a paper airplane in shades of pong on a background of red with large and small rings of pinks and white. Radiating lines of big stitches in pink floss look like the wind blowing past the speeding plane.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2025

Got the rest of the #onions cleaned up today. Had a poor crop last year so my co-conspirator suggested we order three bunches of plants rather than the usual two. They all did great though some bolted. I think we’ll be driving some down the road to the food […] [Original post on toot.community]

Eight crates and trays of various sizes are arrayed on a table. They hold literally hundreds of firm, delicious yellow and red onions

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 18/08/2025

[Food] Time to make another batch of #tomato jam! I love this stuff on so many things, mostly eggs, cheese, and meats. #tomatoes #gardening #seedToTable

A cast-iron Dutch oven full of chopped tomatoes that are red and yellow simmers on the stove, top with sugar and spices.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 16/05/2025

A yellow ladyslipper #orchid that's a cherished division from my late grandmother's garden. She collected it off the former family farm some time in the 1940s or '50s, I believe. I love to see it bloom every year. #Wisconsin #wildflowers #flower

Five yellow flowers shaped like the toe of a slipper with two narrow striped petals on each side and a wider one rising from the top bloom on plants with oval green leaves with longitudinal veins. Just visible inside the opening of the slipper is a lip dotted with red.

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Driftless Roots @driftlessroots.sunny.garden.ap.brid.gy · 05/05/2025

Just a pretty Black-throated Green Warbler we encountered on this morning's #birding walk #birds #wisconsin #BirdWatching

Perched sideways on a vertical branch a pretty bird ponders where his next caterpillar is coming from. He's got a white body with a black throat and black stripes along his sides. His face is yellow with a shiny black eye. There is a black line going through his eye and one arcing through is cheek. The background is green leaves with the sun shining through them.

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