Rug Hooking, Knitting and a RSC Baby Quilt in Progress

After making 6 purple hollow nine patch blocks last week, I took out the bag of blocks that I have made so far this year and discovered that I had enough to make a baby quilt. I took them to the guild sewing day this week and laid them out on the design wall as shown above.  I sewed them together and  today, pin basted it and started the quilting--diagonal lines in both directions through each square. 

I'm using 28wt white thread in the top and 50 wt white in the bobbin.  The backing was in my stash. 

I added most of the red border to my rug hooking project this week. 

And more rows were added to the scarf --it is 60" long now.  I will knit until I run out of wool in the little ball in the picture. 

There are lots of butterflies in our garden these days...Today's picture is a Red Admiral. Its wings look a bit worse for wear. 

Our shamrock is blooming. It does well every year in a pot on our back step which is in the shade all day long. 

Can you handle another bee picture?  

My hanging baskets are very purple this year. 

Finn and my daughter went home this week.  Finn loved being outside in the backyard while he was here. The redbud tree in this picture had major storm damage this week when the trunk split and half the tree came down.  It may need to be removed which makes me sad as I love the pink blossoms in the spring and the vibrant green colour of the leaves in the summer.  

Now that my daughter is home, she is trying to get caught up on her book blanket granny squares.  Here are her June squares and the books she read.  She promised to have the July squares and books ready for next week's post.  Finn is a reluctant granny square model tonight. 

I will link up with Kathy, Frederique, and Angela. 
 

Yellow and Green, and some Purple too.

Purple is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour this month. I was not sure if I had enough 2.5" squares to make six blocks--my purple stash is sparse, but I managed to get my blocks done without getting a friend to donate some scraps to my project.  I have 48 blocks made so far--this might be enough. I will have to lay them out and see how they look.  

My sewing time this week has been spent working on the yellow and green potato chip quilt.  This quilt will be donated to the nursing home where my MIL lives for the auxiliary to raffle off as a fundraiser.  All the fabrics you see in the front and back of this quilt are from my stash.  My pieced back is not big enough --I searched though my stash for the right colour of green or yellow yardage to make it bigger but to no avail... I had to go shopping.  I managed to find a yellow tone on tone print that will work perfectly.  I need to wash it before adding it to the top and bottom of what I have already made. 

Finn approves. 

I originally made 12" blocks but the quilt was not quite big enough.  I added another round of potato chips and now, it is the right size. 48 by 64" ...this picture was taken before the last round was added. 

This monarch butterfly has been visiting my flowers all week and today, it sat still enough for me to get a picture. 

Lots of bees buzzing around too.  

Finn has been enjoying the sunshine.  

We saw a turtle digging a hole to lay her eggs yesterday when we took Finn for a walk. 

I will be working on my pitcher plant rug hooking project tomorrow (I'm working on the border) for slow Sunday stitching with Kathy. This did not get any attention this past week.  I will also link up with Frederique. 

Home from the Cottage, again!

My husband and I, our daughter and Finn spent the last week at a cottage.  One week sure does go by fast, but we managed to fill our days with reading, sitting on the dock, rughooking, knitting (me),  crocheting and cross stitch(my daughter).  We went to a farmers market and into town to do some shopping one day but just spent the rest of the time relaxing at the cottage. 

Finn loved napping in a chair on the screened in porch.  As you can see, I did a fair bit of hooking on my pitcher plant picture.  

I finished reading 4 books and started a fifth.  

My daughter, Finn and I went canoeing one evening.  We noticed that one cottage we went by had a barn quilt...no pictures as we did not take our phones in the canoe.  My husband was the official photographer from the dock. 

Of course, I took a few pictures...

Reading and cold drinks on the dock in the evenings after supper...

Finn was very helpful when I was knitting.  

The week before we left, I did a little demo on options for layouts for potato chip blocks at the Oxford Quilters Guild.  We are encouraging the members to try making a scrappy potato chip quilt over the summer.  I am making a donation quilt with my yellow and green scraps.  Now that I see the pictures, I think I will be removing the darker green fabric from the pile as they stand out too much. 

 I hope to make more progress on these this week. I will link up with Kathy and Frederique.  Hope you are staying cool in this heat we are having right now!  Readers from the Southern Hemisphere won't have to worry about the heat...

A Weekend at the Cottage

 My friend, Christine, and I had a few days away at the cottage last weekend. We brought our sewing machines, projects, and handwork with us, as well as some books to read and good food to eat.  It was a pretty relaxing weekend.  A storm blew through and the power was off for 12 hours, but we found lots to do.  We even toasted bagels and boiled water for tea on the BBQ!  

I started a Tiny House quilt (online class by Jo Avery).  My houses still need roofs and chimneys but I did didn't have the right colour of fabric with me to do them when we were away.  I need to make more houses and trees before I put it together to make a table runner.  

I took an improv tree class with Cheryl Arkison a few months ago and added a few more trees to my stack while we were away. 

Our guild is making some Quilts of Valour and I made these blocks to hand in for this group project.  The centre squares were provided and I used my own fabrics for the frames. 

There was knitting on the screened porch when the power was out. 

My flannel scraps baby quilt got some attention.  The centre is pieced together now and I put enough scraps together to finish off two corners.  I will have to piece more scraps together to finish the last two corners.  I didn't bring enough scraps with me...but do not fear, I still have lots.

Christine reupholstered a chair at the cottage with some selvages.  The old seat cover was looking a bit tired and now this chair has a new life!

One of Christine's goals for the weekend was to learn how to use her hand crank singer sewing machine.  She could still sew, even though the power was off!  She sewed her Quilts of Valour blocks on this machine and then started a new project.  She wants to piece the entire quilt top using the hand crank machine.  

On Saturday afternoon, our friend, Cathy of Eagle's Wings Quilts came for an afternoon of hand stitching and chatting.  There were also a few treats consumed...  Cathy worked on a paper pieced quilt--she has received squares from several blogging friends to use in this quilt and we added more squares to her collection when she arrived. Christine added more stitches to her cross stitch project.  It is almost done! I did some rug hooking on my pitcher plant picture. 

We ate our meals out on the screened in porch, overlooking the lake.  

One evening, there was reading time on the dock.  (until the bugs chased us back into the cottage!)

I came home to an explosion of colour in my garden!  Lots of flowers blooming at the moment.  

Several of the quilters who made quilts for the hospice were on hand last week to present 22 quilts to the new hospice which will be opening in July. (Not all of the quilts are in this picture.) The staff at the hospice were thrilled to receive our donation!  Thanks to all who contributed to this worthwhile project. 

It's been really hot this week, but Finn still wanted to spend time outside.  Don't worry, my daughter did not let him stay out too long in the heat.  

I have started working on the blue sky and the flowers are just about done. 

I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers as well as Frederique.