Love Birds Ready to be Framed

 And just like that, Love Birds is done!  I took a picture of me making the last stitch in the Bride bird's hat. 

The fabric is white but the lighting in my sewing room tonight was not the best for taking a picture of the entire wreath with the Love Birds in the middle.  This project was stitched on 14 count white Aida cloth and took 6 months to complete.  I will be washing it and then taking it to the framers sometime in the next couple of weeks. I am going to take pictures of the framing options and text them to the newlyweds to see which one they like the best.  Next up, I have a couple of embroidery kits to stitch and a knitting project to do as well...I'm going to take a break from cross stitching for a while.

I did some paper piecing for the 12th Modern BOM that I have been working on since September. Here is one quadrant of the block. I made the outside edge of each quadrant a bit bigger so that I could trim it down to the right size after sewing them together. 

Here is my finished block. There is one more optional block to make and I think I am going to make my own version of it.  I may use it as a label or on the front of the quilt...I'm not sure yet. I used the glasses fabric in every block and then pulled out my orange and navy striped and polka dot fabrics to add to the quilt blocks. The background is Michael Miller Hashdots in gray. 

The pineapple blocks are sewn together--this involved some rather intense pinning to make sure all of the seams intersected at the right spots.  I was successful in most cases!  I will be quilting this one myself when my sewing machine is back from repair. 

My husband and I spent a couple of days this past week mulching the gardens with a truckload of mulch that was in a big pile in our driveway.  There is still a bit more to do but it has been raining the last couple of days so finishing it will have to wait until we have a dry day.  We have lots more blooms in the garden this week including hydrangea:

Shasta Daisies

Prickly Pear Cactus

Purple Cone Flower

Butterfly Weed

The other activity that ate into my sewing time this week was genealogy.  I went to town looking for documents that told my family story.  My father always told me I inherited my sewing skills from his mother who was a "tailoress".  This week, I dug into her predecessors and found three dressmakers and a tailor!  I guess you could say sewing is in my genes!  

Some of the handwriting on these old records is challenging to decipher and some of the words they used to describe occupations involve googling to figure out what they actually did to earn a living!

Our daughter's cityscape stitching is coming along.  She is stitching it on 18 count Aida cloth. Finn wants you to know that it belongs to him and you can't have it!  LOL.  He has an appointment in two weeks for a haircut.  I'm not sure how he sees with all that hair in his eyes!

I will link up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers at Kathy's blog tomorrow. 

So Close to the Finish Line

 The annual Quilt Canada conference took place online over the past few days and while I have been watching the presentations and quilt shows, I have been stitching away on Love Birds. I finished off the green leaves, both dark and light, and I have started on the bride bird.  

I am very close to being finished all the stitching on this project...a wedding gift for a friend's daughter and her husband. (They got married in November 2020.) I have been working on Love Birds since Christmas. 

The pineapple blocks are all done!  Each block will finish at 8" square in the quilt and there are 12 blocks. There are 71 pieces of fabric in each block--those logs are 1/2" wide.  This small wall hanging has 852 pieces of fabric in it.  The quilt will be 24" by 32" when finished. 

You would think that my orange and green scrap bins would be depleted, but no...

I carefully rearranged the blocks today to make sure that there were no matching fabrics touching each other and started sewing them together.  I am pinning each seam in several spots to make sure the seams match. I have been contemplating quilting designs and think I have made a decision.  Stay tuned!

This week's flower colours are red and yellow.  The first flower is a Stella D'Oro Daylily.  Next up, some Dalias in a planter on our patio followed by our first Prickly Pear Cactus bloom. 

We have a mulch pile in our driveway so our job over the next few days is to get it spread on all of the flower gardens.  We did some in the front gardens today until it started to rain.  I love how everything looks when it is all done--so fresh and neat and tidy. 

My knitting project had a few more rows added.  I am getting better at using the double pointed needles. They are made of bamboo so the stitches do not slip off--this is a good thing!

My husband and I celebrated Father's Day on Friday with a take out dinner from a local restaurant and then we went out for ice cream for dessert.  I had Black Cherry- my Dad's favourite flavour and my husband had Orange Pineapple, his Dad's favourite.  

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads and everyone who nurtures someone else!

Finn had a bath this week and is quite fluffy and soft.  My daughter has started a new cityscape! I'm not sure of the city yet.  Finn is very proud of her work even though he doesn't know what place is being depicted yet either. 

I will link up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers at Kathy's blog in the morning. 

Yellow and Gray Churn Dash, Pineapples, etc.

Despite some sewing machine challenges (it's in for repair now), I managed to finish the yellow and gray scrappy churn dash quilt this past week. I love this colour combination!  The backing is a Libs Elliott print which I had in my stash---but only one yard so I had to add a yellow strip to make it big enough for the backing.  The binding is a yellow Kona solid. The quilting was done with bright yellow Aurifil 50wt thread. 

 At a Zoom sew-in on Tuesday, I made a block for the September Comfort quilt for the Elgin Piecemakers.  The block is called "Folded Corners" and uses a light, a medium and dark fabric in one colour. I found three appropriate fabrics in my pink drawer.

After finishing the block, I pulled out my pineapple blocks and worked on making each block bigger, skinny strip by skinny strip...  As you can see, I am getting closer to having all 12 of my blocks done.  This is how I am going to arrange the blocks. I will be focusing on getting these blocks done and put together this coming week. 

I started a new knitting project this week.  This is the first time I have knitted something with double pointed needles so getting started was a bit of a challenge.  I am getting the hang of it now.  There are cables in this project which is why I was practicing them earlier this year. 

I added lots of dark green stitches to Love Birds this week.  There are still a few more dark green leaves to do and then some lighter green as well. 

My daughter also did some stitching on her butterfly picture. She has started another city scape as well but no pictures to share yet. 

Finn has been sporting his very fashionable doggy bandana this week. 

Our garden seems to have a lot of purple and white blooms this week.   This first one is lavender, backlit by the sun. 

Black Lace Elderberry Bush

Salvia

Japanese Lilac Tree

I will link up with the slow Sunday stitchers in the morning. 

Purple Scraps and Love Birds

 The Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour for June is Purple so I made two purple blocks for my project this week...one is purple (violet) and the other is magenta (red-violet).  Some of these fabrics have been in my stash for a long time and others are more recent acquisitions. 

Here are the 8 blocks I have made for this project so far. I will keep making one or two blocks a month until the end of the year and then put the top together.  I really like building a quilt this way--just a little sewing and cutting each month and in a year, you have a quilt!

I have started quilting my yellow and gray Colour Blocks Quilt--I have been having some intermittent machine problems while working on this quilt so it is going a bit slower than I anticipated.  Hopefully, the sewing machine co-operates and I can finish quilting it soon.

The Toronto Modern Guild has organized a round robin --I am in a group of 6 people and we are each making blocks or borders for each other's quilts. I made the sewing machine block and the spool border was made by the next person who mailed the borders to me. My group is made up of people who do not live in Toronto so we are just emailing pictures and the size of our quilts to the next person each month.  I wonder what the next person will make for my quilt?  I am still thinking about what I might do for round robin partner this month. 

I managed to get quite a bit of work done on Love Birds this week.  Thankfully, when I joined the circle at the bottom of the wreath, the stitches ended up right where they were supposed to be!  There are some leaves in two colours left to do as well as the Bride bird.  The end is in sight!

My husband and I went bike riding at a provincial park about an hour from where we live on Monday.  It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed a picnic lunch before riding all afternoon.  The next time we go back to Rondeau Provincial Park, we are going to leave our bikes at home and go hiking on some of the trails instead. 

My daughter's stitching on the butterfly embroidery is looking fantastic.  The butterfly looks like it is going to fly right off the fabric!

I have a new plant in my garden which is currently in flower.  The flowers are very tiny on this ice plant but up close, the colours are spectacular. Great colour inspiration for a future quilt, I think!

Finn is feeling fine again and is back to his usual helpful self this week.  He will be going for a haircut soon! We can't see his eyes!

I will link up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge folks in the morning and with the Slow Sunday Stitchers on Sunday morning.   Have a good weekend. It's going to be hot here!