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. 

This week's activities

In a previous post, I was lamenting the thickness of the pitcher plant stem in my rug hooking project.  A couple of hooking friends suggested I try hooking  a single line of stitches with two strands of yarn.  This looks so much better!  If you look at the part at the lower end of the stem where the green leaves are hooked around the stem, it looks to be the right width now. You can see from this picture that I got almost all of the leaves done this week.  I hope to move on to the flowers this week. Then, the background and borders will take a while...

The flannel improv scrap blocks are coming along nicely.  Sew, iron, trim, repeat.  The blocks get bigger and bigger. I'm aiming for a baby quilt with these. 

For the past six years, I was encouraging local quilters to make quilts for our new hospice which will be opening this summer.  The building of the hospice was delayed by a few years due to COVID.  I had a goal of 20 quilts for the 10 beds at the hospice--two per bed so if one was in the laundry, the other could be on the bed.  I am happy to report that my local quilting colleagues really stepped up and 21 quilts were donated!  The quilts are to be presented to the hospice in mid June and the quilters who worked on them have been invited to come and participate in giving the quilts over to the hospice.  Nineteen of the quilts are in this pile--the other two are still with the quilters but I have seen pictures.  Twenty one beautiful quilts to help the patients at the hospice and their families know that the community supports them in a difficult and sad time in their lives.  Over the time that I have been storing the quilts in my spare bedroom, I have unfolded, refolded and moved them around so that they don't have permanent creases.  It is time for them to be laid out on the beds at the hospice!

 

I just finished this book. Sonia Day is a Canadian author and lives within a couple of hours of where I live.   I particularly enjoyed The Newfoundland Lunch Party as we were in Newfoundland almost two years ago for vacation.  Many of the places mentioned in the book are places we visited when we were there.  There are recipes in the back of the book for the food mentioned in the story.  A fun read!

My daughter and Finn have been working on the last bits of the crocheted Christmas Blanket.  There are 22 pink "candies" in the gingerbread border that she is currently working on.  Then, there are lots of ends to weave in for each of the 88 candies and also for the final borders.  Finn is an expert at side eye. He is sure that this blanket is for him. 

Our weigela bush is just starting to come into bloom.  It blooms two or three times over the course of the summer. 

The bees are loving the deutzia bush which is in full bloom right now 

On a walk this week, I noticed someone had left some birdseed out for the birds but the squirrels were also enjoying the feast. 

The Mayapples are in bloom too.  The flowers are underneath the leaves which form an umbrella shape. A sure sign of spring.  

Three friends and I are doing a round robin.  Each of us supplied a centre block and some fabrics and the parcels get passed around each month.  Each quilter adds one border to the project before it is sent on to the next person.  I received this block.  I have added my border and it is on its way. There will be a grand reveal in three months.  

Here is the link to the last time I did this with some friends 11 years ago.  

I will link up with Kathy and Frederique.  Have a good week!
 

Moving Right Along

This has been a productive week in the sewing department!  I finished quilting the potato chip quilt I made for the local hospice.  I used the cut offs from the backing to make the binding, remembering after I had machine stitched it to the front of the quilt that it needed to be machine stitched down, not hand stitched as I usually do.  Oops! This is because the quilts for the hospice will be washed and dried by machine often and the binding will stay on better if machine stitched.  I did not want to un-sew all of the binding so I just machine top-stitched it from the back. It's not perfect on the front but it will stay on when it is washed.  I'm very happy with how this quilt turned out!   

Here is the back.  You can see my straight line quilting easier on the back. There is lots of quilting to keep it together over many cycles in the washer and dryer. 

I pin basted a gift quilt this week and it will be next up for walking foot quilting.  I will show pictures of it once it has been gifted. 

I finished off two more placemats for Meals on Wheels.  I have two more to make to reach my self-imposed goal of 12. 

Lots of cross stitching done this week--I am well on my way to finishing the second quadrant of my winter/Christmas piece.  The pattern is called "Winter Woods" from Satsuma Street.

My daughter has become addicted to crochet and has started another project.  This is a Christmas crochet-along blanket.  Finn is modelling the centre square which will be a gingerbread house.  It is about 1/2 done.  Finn thinks the balls of wool made a nice pillow for his bum. 

This sleeping position is very comfortable but resulted in a serious case of bed face. 

The fall colours are peaking here.  This is the Worplesdon Sweetgum tree in our backyard. 

This picture was taken at the park while I was on my morning walk earlier in the week. 

 Here are a few more photos from our recent SW USA adventure.  We took a two hour boat tour on Lake Powell at 8am.  Turned out to be just us and the guide as no one else wanted to get up that early!  Beautiful day and not too hot at that hour in the morning. The guide was very knowledgeable and told us the history of the Glen Canyon Dam that was built to form the reservoir.  The first picture was taken from the Glen Canyon Museum and the second from a lookout above the lake. The rest are from the boat tour. 

The level of the lake fluctuates depending on how much snow falls in the mountains at the source of the Colorado River. You can clearly see how high the water was at one time in the next picture.  

I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning.  I will link up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge folks and Frederique today.   Have a great week!

Getting Back to Normal

I have been reacquainting myself with my sewing machine over the past few days.  I decided to get going on quilting the potato chip quilt top I made for our new hospice (opening in the Spring of 2025).  First I quilted two lines in the sashing to get everything stabilized and ready for quilting the blocks. I also added a row of stitching around the entire quilt the width of the walking foot into the beige border and then a 1/8th of an inch from the edge of the border to keep it flat.  I hummed and hawed over what colour of thread to use and finally decided on a beige thread on top and a light blue in the bobbin.  The backing fabric is blue. The picture below shows how each block will look when all of the edge to edge straight line quilting is done.  The second picture is of the back of the same block.

I spent a bit of time each day this week adding some stitches to my cross stitch picture. The bear needs four more stitches in his cheek and there are a few snowflakes to add in the air.  I have added more stitches to the border at the bottom too. 

You may remember that I am making a dozen placemats for Meals on Wheels--an outreach project of the Oxford Quilt Guild.  I had 6 done before my vacation and managed to finish two more this week as well as get another two to the stage of hand stitching the binding. Only a couple more to make to meet my goal!

Finn sent me a couple of pictures today of my daughter's crochet progress...three more "fried egg" (I mean daisy...) granny squares and more rows on her cream coloured blanket. 

I sorted through some of our vacation pictures this week.  The first few are from Antelope Canyon near Page, Arizona.  We did a guided tour of this beautiful slot canyon. Amazing what flowing water will do to sandstone. 

The next pictures were taken on our favourite hike of the trip... The Queens Garden/Navajo Loop/Wall Street combination hike in Bryce Canyon National Park. It was a really hot day but we dressed to protect ourselves from the sun, used sunscreen, wore hats, hiking boots, ate salty snacks and drank lots of water.  Our daughter gave us hiking poles for Christmas last year and they were used on all of our hikes. As you can see below, the scenery was breathtaking. There were lots of ups and downs on this hike.  We hiked up all of those switchbacks in the first picture at the end of the hike. 

We met a little friend when we stopped for a drink and a snack. (we did not share our snacks!)

I'm not sure how this tree is even alive!

Yes, that is the trail down there!

We hiked earlier in the day and we were back to our car in time for the picnic lunch that we had in the cooler bag. We slept well that night (and every night!). 

That's enough vacation pictures for this week.  I will share more next week.  In the meantime, I will link up with Kathy and Frederique.