Roses For Leanna

This has been a week of finishes. I started this quilt in a class about 10 years ago. Put it away while I figured out what I needed to do to love it. Pulled it out this past spring, fixed the top to my liking, and then Leanna fell in love with it. Since Leanna needed a quilt, it is going to her, now that it is finished.

Of course, I have a very hard time finding a place to take a picture of a large quilt, that isn't covered in pet hair, but I tried.

It is a little lumpy but it stayed clean. It is 78" x 78", according to the lady who did the quilting.

It has lots of red roses. The border is tone on tone roses.

Krista did an awesome job on the quilting.

The back is red flannel so I asked her to use beige in the bobbin, too, to give the back some interest.

The corners are flat and square.

It is even labelled! Most of my quilts aren't. I expect she will enjoy it when the weather gets cooler.

And, because summer isn't quite over yet,  another pair of shorts for my little guy.

Lace Ilex

According to my Ravelry Project Page, I started this scarf on November 30, 2015. I guess it was waiting for me to be in the mood to finish it. Since I am finishing some vintage UFO's right now, it has now had its turn to be completed.

Here it is, this morning, enjoying the sun. I love the way the shadow shows the lace. It is 14.5" wide and nearly 60" long so it will be very nice in the winter. to wrap up in.

The ends taper to give it some interest. I love the seed stitch, not your usual edging for lace.

A closeup of the lace. Each repeat has a slightly different lace pattern. The pattern is Lace Ilex by Susann Hajjar.

The yarn is Diamond Luxury Collection Footloose.  This yarn is discontinued. Fortunately, when I realized that I was going to be short, my friend Cheryl came to the rescue with a skein from her stash, in the same lot.

These pictures are a much more accurate representation of the colour of the yarn. It is a rich, deep purple.

I had a professional model visiting today, who volunteered to show what it looks like on. Most of his work has been for his Mommie's Facebook Page.

Nearly Finished

I spent a couple of weeks working on projects that I hope I will be able to tell you about soon, but I can't blog about those things just yet.

So today, I thought I would show you a couple of well aged UFO's that will soon be FO's.

First up is the quilt that I found during my tidying and redesigned so I could happily finish it.

I have been working on finishing the binding, doing about 30 minutes at a time. I am more than half done, so it should be finished by the end of this week.

The lace scarf from 2015 now only needs a dip in the hot tub, and some blocking to be ready for cold weather. Hopefully, the cold weather will not be here too soon. My camera doesn't like purple as much as I do. I'll try for a better picture after it is blocked.

Yesterday, I cleared all my flat surfaces in my sewing room, so some new things can be started, without anything in the way. The scraps are filed, the tools have returned to their rightful homes.

Beautiful, isn't it. Slowly, I am creating order.

Renovations

Hollyhock volunteers

We had plans for fixing a garden that had gotten out of control. However, the snow extended into April, the tulips didn't flower until late May, we had a monsoon season in June (some of which we missed by travelling to BC) and then it got hot.

When we had a couple of days of relief from the humidity, we put aside all other activities and dug in.

It was a jungle.

I'm not sure what half of that is. There is grass, trees, weeds, and some rather nice perennials.

So, it was all dug up, and the salvageable plant life was carefully removed and set in buckets of water. We filled two big yard waste bags to the top.

By the end of the day, it looked like this.

We left the hollyhocks on the back edge, along with some sedum.

We have been gardening in containers at the back for years.

We have herbs, tomatoes, some flowers, all nestled into pots. Since the patio is the sunniest spot in the yard, it made sense.

We have a squash growing in the composter, again, a volunteer. I wonder what it actually is.

We even have greens in pots, cuddled up to the flowers.

So, we decided to do the same thing in the front.

I don't think they are in their final spots yet, and they need to fill in, but it is so much easier to look after. I think there may be some herbs in there as well, however, no kale, yet!

Not a lot of crafting got done, but I did make another pair of shorts.

My stash decreases, as his shorts drawer fills up.

The Marvelous Mystique

Mystique has been with us for 4 months now, waiting for someone to give her a "forever" family. Meanwhile, she likes to keep busy. I was enjoying her activity that other day.

We put peanuts on "her" window ledge and she sits and watches those coming to her "Takeout Window"

How may I help you?

That will be $2.49.

Thank you, call again!

It's been a busy morning!

Last week, she tried her hand at knitting. It wasn't very successful.

She does have good taste in yarn, though. It is a cashmere blend.

Summer is finally here, and I made my little guy a pair of shorts.

The retail clothes sold for boys is so boring. Quilting cottons are much more fun. The pattern is Sunny Day Shorts by Oliver + S

A Trip West

We headed all the way west, to visit family, last week. So let me bore you with some holiday snaps.

Before we left, I was looking for something and found a UFO that needed very little work to finish, so I finished it up.

It is a scarf, in pompom yarn and given that it is 29C today, I guess it is going into the Christmas box. I wonder who will want a lovely soft scarf.

I also made 6 lip balm holders to take along as hostess gifts.

I managed to get a picture of 4, two had already been claimed.

The weather in Victoria was lovely, so we spent as much time as we could outdoors.

I tend to take pictures of things I don't see here. Ocean, mountains, lighthouse.

The highest point of Fort Rodd Hill. The fort was in use from the 1800's until the end of WWII. This is the Belmont Battery.

We went geocaching at Esquimalt Lagoon, but didn't find anything. I think our middle Canada mindset kept saying that no one would put a cache there because it would be destroyed in the spring floods. Of course, it is the ocean, so no spring floods, just tide.

I was invited to visit a private bonsai garden. This is a bonsai dogwood tree.

An azalea with flowers much bigger than we see them here. This one blooms in two colours, and it isn't grafted.

This azalea was tiered like a wedding cake, and also two coloured.

I was sworn to secrecy on the location of the garden, but it isn't really a problem because someone else drove, and I have no idea where I was.

This was the concierge at our hotel, an amiable fellow, named John. Not good on advice on where to eat, though.

This is the dock at Butcharts Gardens. I brought back lots of pictures of ocean and mountains.

This pretty much encapsulates Butcharts Gardens. From the bottom up, you can see the Italian Gardens, The Rose Gardens, and the tops of the trees in the Sunken gardens, with a view of the trees going up the mountain. The gardens are built in an old cement quarry.

Because we travelled back on June 22, we got to see the Midnight Sun. This picture is out the window of the plane at about 23:30 Eastern time.

The sun can still be seen to the north. Of course, we didn't get to see an Northern Lights because it was still bright.

Fortunate Finds

A few weeks ago, in my ongoing sewing room cleanup, I found a quilt top that had been resting for quite some time (I suspect it might be 10 years). If memory serves, I was originally overwhelmed by the size of the quilt, then, when I next looked at it, I thought it looked too Christmas-y to put all that work into.

This time, I took a careful look at the top. The green borders had not been sewn on, merely pinned and there was more fabric in the box. My original plan would have made the quilt huge. After I removed the green borders, and added just red borders, it is much improved in my mind.

It is now about double bed sized. It has very nice red borders.

Doesn't look Christmas-y at all. It actually looks kind of like my backyard trees.

Lots of red and cream with some green leaves.

In a piece of good luck, I was at the quilt shop where I got the fabrics for this in the first place. Another store in the building had had a flood from a burst pipe, which caused the quilt shop to go through their storage area, looking for things that had gotten wet. They found some older fabric, that they dropped on the sale rack.  I found a bolt of the floral print.

There was a little over a metre on the bolt, so I took the whole thing. I now have binding for my new quilt, as well as extra fabric for doing something with the borders I removed. I have a plan!

Oh, and I figured out a way around the overwhelming size. I am sending it to be quilted on a long arm. Turns out you don't have to do every thing yourself. I just need to make the backing and it will be off to be quilted.