I love the material, you did a great job. I never do curve corners only squares, so I'm no help at all. We went to a craft show this AM and a lady had totes she had make with raggedy edges. To me they were ugly because she had clipped so far apart they were not frayed very well. I know people that do this with a quilt that will be washed because it will eventually frey but I don't think a tote will be washed that much. Rosa

Just washing my fabrics for I spy swaps partially stopped up my sewer line. When the DH ran the snake through the line, he said it looks like "mop strings". Since I am dealing with larger pieces, I bought some lingerie bags to help with that problem. I'm not sure it would help with the finer fraying of a rag quilt. You might put a drawstring in an old pillowcase which would be much like Wanda's cotton bag. bk

Bart, about lilacs and peonies and winter chill. I suspect you could grow them, though you should look around and see what people have in their gardens in your area. We've had a couple of winters in late years where the temperatures hardly fell below freezing; there was one year when my Salvia guarantica never froze back and got up to fourteen feet the following summer, and the Teas starting blooming in March. But, even that year, the tulips and cherries, the peonies and lilacs, the once blooming old roses all flowered. There are different kinds of lilacs, but the classic ones everybody knows are bred from Syringa vulgaris, which is the semi-wild lilac, I'm guessing, that you got suckers from, and with similar needs. Where to buy them from is a question. Early on I bought all the kinds they had from Priola, though their real interest is perennials, not shrubs; then a local nursery for some years offered color coded varieties, without the names though they were named kinds, and picked up similar ones from another nursery, also color coded. My impression is that there are a handful of varieties that are fairly common, and others will take more looking, or you really need to go to a specialist, which could be expensive. Pay attention to the rootstock, as I believe some lilacs are grafted on the species and their growth is identical. They can come own root, and I think most of mine started life as suckers. Lilacs are tolerant, but what they really like is amended clay and full sun. Peonies, both tree and herbaceous, like part shade in summer, more sun in winter, at least, this is how I grow them. They like the same kind of soil as roses and tomatoes: a good stout clay well amended with organic matter, the hole well dug. I've had trouble getting them started, too, mainly because I didn't prepare holes adequately in our terrible ground. That's why I was thorough when I thought up the peony walk. Sometimes peonies will hold out in conditions where nothing else will grow, but you can't rely on it. I don't think they like to bake in the sun in shallow light soil. There are Mediterranean peonies, too, herbaceous, and there are a few good ones that are pretty easy to find: the double red whose name I forget, 'Mollis', and P. peregrina, commonly found in the form of two named varieties. I'm writing a bit hastily right now; I have to go. Anyway, if your interested you should look into them, both do really well here, and I think they likely would in your area, too. Krista, think how much spring you have ahead of you! All that pleasure ahead. Wisteria is wonderful. People complain about it, but to me it's beautiful in every season, and it will be in every garden I ever plant where the climate allows.

Jen, I bet is has been a crazy week with extra furbabies underfoot. I hope it was a fun one. Nancy, Thanks for the photo of the rain. I've just about forgotten what rain looks like. We're hoping to get some on Sunday or Monday although the amount the 7-day QPF is forecasting for us keeps dropping, choking out hope of getting good rain with each update. Last night's/this morning's rain went both north and south of us (naturally) but we got a few drops.....8' rain....one raindrop every 8 feet. This so-called rain fell for a couple of hours (in theory, because we did have wind, thunder and lightning for the entire time) but the ground still looked dry when it was done, and the rain gauge had less than 1/100th of an inch in it...so we called it a "trace" of rain. It is probable rain fell from the clouds higher above but evaporated as it came through the drier air layer down near the ground because it looked like it was raining, but we literally were not feeling it or seeing it at the ground level. Virga. That's the story of our lives lately. That is so terrible about the ping pong ball sized hail. Hail that size can do a lot of damage. The worst hail I've been in personally myself was baseball to softball sized, and experiencing that once in a lifetime was one time too many. Larry, I'm sorry for all your troubles with the incompetent medical folks who have wasted three months of your time. I know that sort of thing is very frustrating. Jennifer, I am doing my best to hang in there, thinking that if only rain...real rain, not evaporating rain, not rain that falls 3 miles north or 1/2 mile south, but actual real rain that falls on our land and wets everything down....if only.....if only it will fall in the next few days, than maybe I can keep watering and keep the blooms going for the birds, bees, butterflies, etc. We're still hitting 100 every day (105 Thursday at our house, 103 yesterday, 101 today) and not getting the rain, so the garden just roasts and roasts in this heat and dryness. We were out at a fire again yesterday...a really bad one....a 6,000 s.f. barn with animals temporarily trapped by the flames. That big metal barn was like an oven and the firefighters suffered tremendously while fighting that fire. They are tough and never quit, but a person can only take so much heat. For the second day in a row, they already had a firefighter in the ambulance by the time we arrived on the scene with water, Gatorade and more....and we were not that slow to arrive either. The heat is just that bad. I had cooked fire food (still had some in the oven when the pagers went off) all morning long, and spent the whole afternoon at the fire, so never stepped foot in my garden yesterday. I finally went in there around 7:30 or 8:00 pm tonight just to water tomatoes in containers. That is all I could manage to do today. I couldn't go to today's fire (because, of course, there was one....but Tim went) because we have the 3 year old granddaughter this weekend. Instead of playing in the dirt, I've been playing with Play Dough and Softee Dough. I know you all are jealous. Megan, If every weather guy in the state stood on their head and swore that August would be more mild....I still wouldn't believe it. Not for us. Being this far south, we rarely get the cool-downs that hit points further north, so I don't expect much relief. We usually go anywhere from 2 to 5 degrees higher than forecast anyway, so even if they forecast cooler weather, we do not necessarily see it happen. Tomorrow is supposed to be our last 100+ degree day for a week or so, and I hope they are right. Even the low 90s would feel good compared to what we've been having. They just don't seem to do a very good job forecast our high temperatures down here. We also get a lot of compressional heating as fronts pass or are approaching or whatever, and inevitably the compressional heating pushes us to higher temperatures than what was forecast. I didn't even known what compressional heating was when we moved here, but I sure do know what it is now. Y'all know how much trouble I have with venomous snakes slithering out of the woods and into the garden to eat frogs and toads and whatever.....well, yesterday, at the fire, towards the end when the firefighters were doing overhaul, they brought out a charred crispy snake, burned and blackened so badly that you couldn't tell what sort of snake it had been, but it had the pointed head......so, I felt right at home with...the snake of the day. See there, I don't even have to step foot into the garden to see snakes. We ate lunch early today at Caddo Street BBQ in Ardmore, which is a really new place. I think it opened for business on July 4th. It was amazing---the food all tasted home-made, and I do mean home-made, not like the restaurant version of home-made but like true grandma-cooked-it-in-the-kitchen home-made. They're only open from 10:30 a.m. until approximately 2:30 p.m. (closing earlier if the meat sells out early, but staying open later if they still have meat available) and we were there early to guarantee we would get fed before the place turned into a standing-room-only situation. So, if you're in line ordering your food at 10:30 a.m., I guess it is brunch more than breakfast or lunch. I would gladly eat our first meal of the day there each Saturday for the rest of our lives. It all was so good, and Saturday seems to be the one day that Tim, Chris, Jana and I all can get together. We met the owner who seems like a fine person (and he sure knows how to smoke meat) and Chris won a free t-shirt for being the first customer in line this morning (which surprised and thrilled him---he will wear that shirt with pride). So, my weekend hasn't been about gardening at all, really, and I don't care. I need a break. Whether I want a break or not is a moot point---the daily fires (which I knew were coming at some point due to the drought) will ensure I pretty much stay out of the garden for a while, I guess. I do hope I can get back into some sort of gardening schedule on Monday and at least manage to harvest daily. I think that all that is really waiting to be harvested now is a few watermelons and some okra. Thankfully, I'm growing Stewart's Zeebest---and you can let it can really long and it doesn't get woody right away like some other okra varieties do. I'll try to start the weekly thread on time in the morning because the three year old usually sleeps in late and that should give me some computer time. I hope you all get whatever wonderful weather is in your forecast....rain, cooler temperatures....all of the above. Dawn