Blowing in the Wind

A little iris flowerbed

Patio flower pots

This is the year of the garden! And it seems as though I’ve spent much more time there than at the sewing machine, but oh! the results are worth it! We’ve had perfect weather for flora and foliage to flourish, with the past week delivering lovely showers, keeping all things green and beautiful. The rain also means a great time saver for us, as without it we must haul water for the garden and flowerbeds, and then there’s the two or three hours spent hand watering everything. It’s a huge time commitment and certainly takes me away from other things, but I find great joy in the process and the garden can also be extremely inspiring.

Blocks all sewn together

You might remember this quilt as one that was up on the design wall a while back. I hadn’t done an update report on it for quite some time but I am still plugging away at it when I get a chance. As you can see, the blocks are all stitched together and there are two border sections added on, one at the top and one at the bottom of the quilt. These are all hand appliqued with various motifs and objects pertaining to the garden or my personal life, and it’s been great fun to pick and choose odd, quirky objects to include. I cut all the border strips and have been doing the applique on each one prior to stitching the borders onto the center of the quilt. This makes the hand sewing a bit less awkward by reducing the bulk of fabric, but there will be some applique to do when all the borders are on, just to fill in the corners.

Like petals in the wind

Working on border #3 now

Windy days

So between the rain and the wind there has been little opportunity for good quality quilt photos but sometimes you just have to go for it… and have fun with it. I wasn’t even going to post these pictures after I uploaded them to the computer, as there wasn’t really a good one amongst them, where the quilt hangs lovely and straight. The way I look at it though, lovely and straight can be highly overrated and although I muttered some cuss words under my breath while taking the pictures, I giggled a lot too. I must have looked a complete fool trying to calm the wind and wrestle the quilt into submission.

I’m attempting to have this quilt top complete by the end of the month as it has been lingering on my 17 in 2017 list and holding up the progression on other projects, but I’ve also just recently sent in my ‘Intent to Enter’ form for a big show this fall and must get a hustle on that list now. I’m entering eight fairly large quilts into the show and they are mostly in various stages of completion. I probably won’t be posting about them until the show is over as I’m not quite sure about the committee’s policy on publishing prior to the exhibition, so better safe than sorry. I promise there will still be lots of progress to report on, however, as I’ve been digging deep into the archives and found some ancient projects that I’d like to move along to the finished stage.

Stay tuned for more weather reports, garden updates, and of course, stitching news. As always, carol xox