Spring!

I haven't been posting much recently because, as I mentioned, the garden has been calling. All the mulch has been distributed and an initial weeding accomplished. I can see from this morning's stroll, that another is in the offing soon. There are a number of humble plants in the yard which only bloom in the spring and are diminutive in nature. They are among my favorites. Here are a few:

Perennial Forget-me-not  or Siberian Bugloss, next to a Japanese Painted fern.

Tiarella, aka foam flower

Heuchera, Coral Bells, Caramel varietal

Another Heuchera. I have forgotten the name of the varietal.

Primrose. A bargain plant plucked half dead from the clearance shelf at the supermarket.

Fritillaria in the foreground (and out of focus); daffodils in the background. There are at least a dozen varieties of daffodils and they went all out this spring. Maybe a harsh winter does them good.

Please note the abundance of mulch and lack of weeds.

Dick and Jane Quilt Top

I just finished this little quilt top today. It is for a cute little two year old - the daughter of my next door neighbors. They also have a newborn boy, so he is next up for a quilt, too. Yes. I know. The black and white half square triangle border is going every which way. I realized that after it was put together. The corners are supposed to look like the upper left and lower right ones and not like the other two. I am hoping the little girl won't notice. On the other hand, now that I am looking at this photo, I may take it apart and do it correctly. Sigh.

As soon as the fabric for the backing arrives from Connecting Threads, I will begin machine quilting. They are having a one week sale on Quilter's Candy fabric and a cheery yellow dotted piece will be perfect for the backing of this quilt. From the same source I also was able to snag a piece of royal blue dotted fabric for the back of the QOV quilt top.

Both tops will be quilted on a 1950 Singer 66. I have a walking foot for the 66 and tried it out on a quilt sandwich sample. Seems to work great. The 66 is a workhorse and the harp (distance from the needle to the right side of the machine) measures 9", which is 3" wider than my Pfaff. I am counting on the extra space to make this task easier. I will back the cabinet up to the Koala cabinet that houses the Pfaff. That machine will be retracted into the base of the cabinet, giving me a large unobstructed (unless there is a cat on it) area to take the extra size and weight of the quilt. I will only be doing straight stitching as the feed dogs don't drop on this machine. There is a solution to that and in the future I may try my hand at free motion quilting on this machine.

This evening I spent some time organizing a few things in the sewing room. I have quite a few large pieces of fabric that have been purchased here and there that are intended for quilt backs. I took them all out, measured them, and marked the individual pieces with the yardage so I won't have to do this every time a backing is needed. Duh! Shoulda done that the first time. All of the stray pieces of scrap fabric lying around on the floor were picked up, cut into Bonnie Hunter's Scrap Saver system or chucked into the bin for Victoria Findlay Wolfe's 15 Minute of Play workshop coming up in July.

The templates for Sharon Pedersen's Rose of Sharon quilt finally arrived after over three weeks en route from Nine Patch Media in Victoria, British Columbia. I have the idea to use them for the applique on the TQS 2013 BOM that is still languishing on the wall. All in good time.

Happy Easter, All!

QOV Quilt Top Finished

My QOV quilt top is finished. I added a 1.5 inch red batik inner border and a 4.5 inch blue outer border. The blue fabric is a blue Grunge fabric from the Basic Grey line by Moda. The pattern is Strip Twist from Bonnie Hunter's free patterns at quiltville.blogspot.com. This was a quick and easy pattern that gives a lot of visual interest with a simple construction technique.

Starting a Quilt of Valor

Kevin the Quilter will be the guest speaker at our guild in September. As I have mentioned before, Kevin is holding a block drive to make oodles and oodles of Quilts of Valor for military veterans. The blocks are simple but graphic and even a beginner will be able to make them. I have already sent him a set and he is past 2600 blocks! Yikes. There will be a sew-in later this year to make quilts from the donated blocks. Count me in!

Our guild is also going to be making Quilts of Valor (hereinafter simply referred to as QOV) this year. I made a start on mine this evening by using Bonnie Hunter's free pattern, Strip Twist. This is a quick pattern to make with great graphic qualities. The block uses 2.5" strips and goes together easily. I unearthed a small box of patriotic and mostly red, white, and blue fabrics from the top shelf of my sewing room closet. Always amazes me what turns up in there. I only made two strip sets this evening so there is a fair amount of repetition in the example above. The quarters are not yet sewn together and will not be next to each other in the quilt, so that little optical illusion in the center that looks like a quarter square triangle won't be happening in the completed top.

12 full blocks consisting of 48 quarter blocks will yield a completed quilt top. With a border it will finish at around 60" x 76". I need to check the QOV website to see if that is an acceptable size. If not, I will adjust accordingly.

I have been away from my sewing machine for a couple of weeks. Spring has sprung here and we have been working in the yard most of the time. Today we finished raking up and bagging all the old plant material from the perennial beds. 40 bags of yard waste and counting. It sure looks nice, though, and everything is mostly weeded as well. Several years of assiduously hand weeding and heavily mulching are definitely paying off. There aren't a whole lot of weeds considering the size and number of perennial beds involved. Some of what causes work for me are the little violets and society garlic that my husband planted many years ago. The garlic is especially troublesome as it spreads by seeding itself. I try not to let them flower if there are plants that escape my attention until that time. They hid in and among other plants, especially those with tall slender leaves, such as day lilies. Then all of a sudden in late summer, the tell tale white heads of flowers start appearing. Same deal with the violets. They are lovely if you only have one or two. Thousands of them is another story altogether. Not too many this year, though.

Anyway that time away from the machine definitely showed in this evening's sewing. I hard a hard time keeping to a consistent quarter inch seam. For that matter it proved troublesome to even sew a doggone straight line.

Basket of Hexies

The April hexie block from The Hexie Blog is finished! The wisdom of using scrappy backgrounds is paying off. The yellow basket would not have appeared as dynamic if place on a pale gray fabric.

I have been doing virtually no sewing other than evening hand sewing. The perennial beds are beckoning me outdoors. We are nearly done with raking out all the flower beds and generally doing all the spring garden tasks. Just in time, too, as the mulch man is delivering our annual load of mulch on Monday. Once that is raked onto the beds, we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labors. There is already a lot to look at in the garden. Trillium, primrose, daffodils, and hellebores are in full swing right now. The magnolia tree is ready to pop open, and day lilies, oriental lilies, ferns, astilbe, and hosta are pushing up everywhere. The peach tree survived its first full year in the ground and while I am not expecting any fruit just yet, it would be nice to see a couple of flowers.

In two weeks several of us will be going on a retreat at a summer place owned by one of the ladies. That will be when I can get some sewing done!

Ninth Puzzler Block

I haven't blogged in a bit because there was really nothing new to show. I am still plugging away on the TQS 2013 BOM quilt. All the parts and pieces have not been sewn and can be arranged on the design wall. Well, now that I think about it, that is not entirely true. The nine small compass blocks that serve as cornerstones in the sashing have to be made. Then, after arranging the parts on the design wall, four sections will be sewn together at a time to make the four squares where the appliques will be. That is another hurdle conquered as I have finally decided on what to put in those areas as I don't care for the ones that are in the pattern.

Other than that, hexies have occupied my time in the evenings, but since they are all the same except for a change in color, it seems repetitious to keep posting photos of those.This evening I got back into the sewing room and made the ninth block in the Puzzler.