Hand and Machine Sewing

I continued quilting my round robin quilt this week, finishing the orange and green spiky sections and starting on the next border.  I am still undecided about what to quilt in the wide blue sections.  I will wait until inspiration strikes to do this part. 

I watched the next Moon Trees lesson on the Thread House Academy with Jo Avery and then added the. running stitch embroidery around my tree branches, as she suggested.  I have fabrics picked out for 8 more blocks and will work away on them over the next while. I used pearl cotton for this stitching, green on the gold tree and a variegated gold thread on the print tree.  I'm looking forward to making the next tree block with interweaving branches. 

The Rainbow Scrap challenge colour for August is yellow.  I cut out and sewed my circle block today.  Only one more block to make before I can put this quilt together. As you can see in the second picture below, it will be medium blue. 

I pulled out my cross stitch this week too and added the top stitching on the windmill and some of the beads.  The kit included a very fine needle to use for the beading.  I still have more beading to do. The beads are really tiny!

I am making a bird coin pouch --this was one of the taster weekend projects for the Thread House Academy. I have completed the embroidery and now I just have to put it together.  There is a zipper to add first.  It doesn't look hard to do in her video.   You can see I was sewing in the car.  We went on a date day earlier this week and I stitched on the way to our destination and on the way home as well. 

I have a variety of coleus plants in my patio pots this year.  Such interesting foliage in lots of different colour combinations. 

We went to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton on Wednesday.  We saw lots of beautiful flowers and several garden critters, including this bunny which was doing its best to hide from view. 

They have a special display of brightly coloured garden sculptures this summer.  

As you know, I like to take reflection pictures. 

Such big ears on a little dog, blowing in the wind.  Finn is cute!

 I will link up with Kathy and the slow stitchers,  Angela and the RSC bloggers and Frederique as well. 

Almost a Week at the Cottage

Christine and I spent most of a week at her cottage and did lots of sewing, chatting, watching movies and eating good food!  It was a bit buggy outside so we were mostly inside.  Christine has lots of bird feeders which she kept well stocked all week so there were lots of birds and other critters to see out the window. 

But first, the sewing!  I added yellow binding to my colour challenge quilt and, over a few days, finished hand stitching it down.  The dock was a good place to take some pictures. 

I did most of the hand stitching in the evenings while watching a movie and drinking tea. 

The colourful birds at the feeder were distracting, but in a good way!

For June, the RSC colour was "pastels" but since I don't have many pastels in my stash, I decided to make purple blocks this month.  I completed all the purple blocks for my four projects while we were at the cottage. 

The Kawartha Dairy just released a new ice cream flavour this week.  We had to try it, of course.  Delicious!

One of my goals for the week was to make the last (paper-pieced) block for my Summer Sorbet sampler from the Threadhouse Academy.  It took a while to make this block as there were four curved paper pieced sections and then curved piecing to put each quadrant together before sewing them all together to make the block.  I put all the blocks together into a finished quilt top before we headed home. I have fabric for backing at home and will work on getting that pieced and the quilt pin basted this week. 

Christine noticed a visitor under the bird feeders one day.  What does the fox say, you may ask?  Nothing.  He was too busy eating.  

Our friend, Cathy, from Eagles Wings Quilts came over for lunch and an afternoon of stitching and catching up. We had not seen Cathy since we were up at the Cottage last June!  I stitched my yellow binding, Cathy worked on some knitting, and Christine did some cross stitch.   A fun afternoon!

Down on the dock, I took a couple of pictures of Christine with her projects.  This Christmas wreath wall hanging had the binding sewn on at the cottage.  The double star with the grey background is for her colour challenge project and is the last of 12 blocks that she has made.  She will be able to assemble the quilt top now. The quilt top hanging in the screened porch is ready for quilting now that the borders have been added.  We also both worked on  Dream Bird coin pouches from the Taster Weekend for the Threadhouse Academy.  No pictures yet...I will take some when we finish our projects. 

You all know that Finn loves a sunbeam.  My daughter took these pictures this morning.  The second one shows her progress on the rounds of her crocheted blanket. 

I took lots of bird pictures at the cottage...  The goldfinches and the hummingbirds were fun to watch at the feeders. 

This squirrel and others were happy to munch on seeds that fell on the ground. 

I am on the program committee for the Oxford Quilters' Guild and we are organizing a 9 patch swap  mystery quilt for the 2026-27 year.  I made 20 nine patches in three colours while I was at the cottage.  Christine worked on making nine patches too but I didn't get any pictures of hers.  The instructions will soon be sent out to the participants in the swap.  I decided to get ahead of the game as I hate the last minute pressure of getting something done for a deadline.  I am also trying to encourage more guild members to sign up for the swap by sharing pictures of my nine-patches.  Each month, the participants will bring in 20 nine patches in a specific colour. The program committee will collect the baggies of nine patches and redistribute them evenly amongst the participants--each person will get 20 nine patches back at the next meeting, made by the other participants. We will swap nine-patches for 7 months for a total of 140 nine patches.  There are also constant blocks which will be made along the way.  At the end of the guild year, the final instructions on how to put everything together will be given out.  It will be fun to see everyone's quilts!

To end this very long and picture heavy post, I present a picture of a new type of featherless bird at the feeder...

I will link up with the RSC folks, the Slow Sunday Stitchers and Frederique.