Sewing, knitting and embroidery

I have been participating in a round-robin quilt project with a group of 5 other quilters from the Toronto Modern Quilt Guild over the past few months.  We each made a centre block and then everyone else in the group makes a border or another block or two for each member of the group according to the style/colours chosen by the quilter.  This month, my block is for J.  Her block was pieced in an improv style with these colours.  I dug into my scrap bins and made her a block that I hope will compliment what she made and what others have made for her as well.  This block is in the mail!  Next, I have to make a block for D, but I am waiting to hear from her with a picture of what she has so far. 

Last week, I showed the front of my swap blocks quilt.  This week, I pieced the back using leftover blocks and some more of the rust fabric.  I should have enough rust coloured fabric to use for the binding, I hope! I had to made a second row of four patches to make the back big enough. The rest of the square in a square blocks have been put away, waiting for inspiration to strike so I can use them up!  In the meantime, this quilt is off to the long arm quilters.  It should be done sometime this coming week. 

The fabric I used for the barn on this little wall hanging is a dark red but it looks brown in this picture... I will quilt this one this week. This is another Lori Holt barn pattern. I'm still working on using up my 30's prints. 

I started the embroidery on this little project today.  The instructions say to use 6 strands of floss, which makes threading the needle a bit of a challenge.  I will have to dig out my needle threader...

Earlier in the week, we went to visit my MIL so I brought my knitting along to work on in the car.  I'm using 5 bamboo DPN's (double pointed needles) and have not had any problems with the stitches falling off the needles until this week--of course one needle fell down between the seats and that was the end of my knitting for that journey!  I retrieved it when we arrived at our destination.  I did not get much knitting done but did roll all of the yarn into a ball so that it does not get tangled up while I am knitting... this was starting to be an issue.  I can use my yarn bowl now for this project!

I will link up with Kathy and slow stitchers all over the world in the morning. 

The flowers that I associate with the end of the gardening season are in bloom now--this week, the sedums were looking quite pretty. 

On Tuesday, my husband and I went bike riding and had a picnic lunch at Pinery Provincial Park. On the way home, we stopped for ice cream in Parkhill. My husband enjoyed Root Beer ice cream and I had Apple Pie ice cream.  It hit the spot!

This is Finn, out for a walk.  Apparently, someone had spilled their poutine on the sidewalk and my daughter would not let him eat it, so he laid down in protest!  They eventually got moving again and Finn did not get to eat the poutine.  (French Fries with gravy and cheese curds, for those of you who are not familiar with poutine!)

Have a great week!  I'm hoping for some cooler weather than we have had for the last few weeks so I can sit outside to knit in the gazebo.