Orange Month for the RSC

Orange is the colour for June for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge so I dug into my 2.5" squares bin and pulled out all of the orange squares.  I cut a few from my orange fat quarter bin to add some variety before making 6 orange hollow nine patch blocks. I am getting quite a stack of these blocks!  When I run out of the centre squares, I will put the blocks together to make a quilt. 

I continue to knit away on my scarf when the mood hits me...Maybe it will be done in time to wear it next winter.  It is now 51" long. 

Ten years ago, I bought myself a Sashiko kit and completed the hand stitching.  Since then, it has been sitting on a shelf, waiting to be finished.  I recently purchased some Japanese woven fabric to use for borders and binding.  I added one border this week and would like to quilt this to make a small wall hanging.  My question--do I just machine quilt the border or should I quilt the hand stitched part too?  The hand stitched part is 12" by 12".  

I finished off the last two selvage strips for a scrappy flannel baby quilt this week. I will work on getting my scraps sewn this week to fill in the middle of the diamond and the corners.  This will be a square baby quilt.  Of course, the flannel scrap and the flannel selvage bins don't even look like a dent has been made in them.  

My husband's birthday was in April.  His gift from me was a three night getaway at a bed and breakfast near Orangeville.  There are several places to hike in the area and we chose two ...Mono Cliffs Provincial Park and Island Lake Conservation area. Mono Cliffs is a popular hiking spot and can be quite busy on the weekends and during the summer.  Since we are retired, we were there on a Monday and there were very few other people around.  Such a beautiful spot and the breeze kept the mosquitoes at bay.  Island Lake was formed by damming the Credit River to control flooding downstream.  There is an accessible 8 km trail all the way around the lake which we hiked on Tuesday morning.  Here are some pictures from our hiking adventures.  The highlight was a close encounter with a porcupine beside the trail at Mono Cliffs.  He quickly climbed a nearby tree when he saw us. 

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The next few pictures are from Island Lake.

Don't you just love the spring green colours this time of year?

We found some interesting local restaurants for dinner after our hikes and indulged in these decadent desserts at Mrs. Mitchell's restaurant in Violet Hill. My husband had carrot cake and I had tartufo.  Both well worth the splurge. 

When wandering around Orangeville, we came across their library and went in to check it out.  It is in an older building--a Carnegie library--which has been completely gutted and renovated into a beautiful, accessible hub for bibliophiles.  The local theatre created some giant books to create an entrance to the story room in the children's department.  We were very impressed!

Speaking of bibliophiles, here are our daughter's crocheted book squares and books for the month of May. 

Finn and our daughter had some great weather for being outside this past week.  

I will link up with Kathy, Frederique and the RSC folks this weekend. 

Flannel Selvages

I dug out my bin of flannel selvages this week, (yes--I have sorted all my selvages by colour but the flannel ones are all together.) and top stitched them onto a strip of lightweight non fusible interfacing.  These two strips and two others will be used in the scrappy flannel baby quilt that I am making. No matter how hard I try, I never seem to run out of scraps. 

The binding is on the quilted Advent calendar for the church bazaar. I added a ribbon to the top of each of the little ornaments and now I am adding buttons to hang each ornament on as the days go by in December.  I have 15 more buttons to sew on and then it will be done. 

The leaves are all done on my pitcher plant rug hooking project and I have started working on the background at the bottom of the picture. 

We had a busy week--My MIL turned 95 on Friday so we had a birthday picnic with her that day. Dessert was butter tarts--her favourite! Earlier in the week, we planted flowers in pots outside her window...geraniums in a hanging basket (Mother's Day gift) and begonias in patio pots (Birthday Gift).  She likes to look out her window and see the flowers.  We are still working on our own yard as well and still have a few more jobs to do out there.  I noticed my clematis vine is blooming this week.  I think this is the most flowers it has ever had. 

My daughter has read a lot of books this month and has made a granny square for each one for her book blanket.  I will post pictures of the squares and the books she has read in May next week.  For now, here is a sneak peak. 

And here is Finn, out for a walk this past week.  Finn is happiest when he is outside lying in the sun.  Here's to lots of sunny days ahead, Finn!

I will link up with Kathy and Frederique, as usual. 

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!
 

Sewing Retreat Report and Gardening

Last weekend, my husband and I went to the Camp Kintail Crafter's Retreat--Christine, my usual accomplice at retreats, had other plans for the weekend so my husband agreed to go with me.  He did some reading and worked on weathering some model train cars.  We also went for several walks--it was a gorgeous sunny weekend. I finished off the last three blocks for this quilt.  I have not decided what to name it yet... The blocks are not put together yet as they have to be all trimmed to the exact same size first.   They are bigger than standard 12.5" blocks.  All these fabrics came from my stash--the background is Essex linen. 

I also got caught up on my hollow nine patch blocks for this year's rainbow scrap challenge.  Green is the colour for May and red for April.  

I made a pillowcase for my MIL for Mother's Day.  We stopped to have dinner with her on our way home last Sunday.  Her dad was a beekeeper and this fabric has bees on the flowers.  She has it on her pillow now and is telling everyone I made it for her. 

This panel was donated to our church sewing group and I took it on as my project for the bazaar.  There are little ornaments (mostly made already) that will be added and hang on a button for each day of advent.  I did the quilting of the wall hanging at the retreat.  This still needs binding. 

My flannel scrap bin is overflowing again so it is time for another flannel scrap quilt.  I cut up some scraps and started sewing them in pairs.  On Monday night, I started sewing the pairs into foursies.  (Christine was here to sew that evening)

After consulting with my hooking friends, I decided to remove the stem stitches and start over.  Luckily, taking a line of loops out of a hooked rug is very easy and quick.  They both suggested I use two strands of yarn for one line of loops in the stems.  I will give this a try soon. 

I asked my daughter for a picture of her April books and granny squares for her book blanket.  She was quite busy at work in April and did not do a lot of reading.  The pace is picking up in May so there will be more squares made this month. 

We have spent lots of time working on the yard and garden this week. This is the last daffodil to bloom in my backyard--so pretty--I like the orange edge on the centre part of the flower. 

My husband picked our this unusual plant at the garden centre where we bought annual for our porch and patio pots.  It is called Kangaroo Paws and originated in Australia.  We looked up what real kangaroo paws look like and you can see an image at this link.  The plant does look remarkably like real kangaroo paws!

I planted all our patio and porch pots and so far, everything is doing well, despite the squirrels best efforts to dig in the pots...

I need to buy some smaller trays for the bottom two plants on this stand. 

My husband's dad always grew geraniums from seed for us each year so we put geraniums on our front porch every year in his memory. 

Christine and I went out for lunch in Port Stanley for her birthday this week.  We went for a walk and then stopped for ice cream before heading home.  

Our deutzia bush is starting to bloom--it will be covered in these small white flowers very soon. 

Two chipmunks entertained my husband and I as we ate supper one night this week.  They would come close to us and then run off quickly. It was hard to get a good picture!

We hiked with the hiking club one morning.  I love seeing all of the spring green emerging at this time of year. 

And, the trilliums are blooming!

Finn likes to lend a helping paw when my daughter is reading or crocheting.  

My Mother's Day gift was a new cookbook.  I have already tried one of the recipes!  yum!

I will close this off with a sunset picture from Camp Kintail. 

I will link up with three blogs this week--Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitchers, Angela's Rainbow Scrap Challenge as well as Frederique's weekly link up.