Tatted Wheelbarrow filled with flowers

 The tatted wheelbarrow is filled with silk ribbon flowers. The flowers on the right are daises worked in  Brazilian Dimensional Embroidery using  pistol stitch and french knots. The bunny on the left is satin stitch. The pattern for the daises and bunny are by Rosalie Wakefield. She has a neat way of making the Turkey Stitch and easy so it will not pull out. It is in her book, "An Artist's Garden". The butterfly is by Helen Stevens using one strand in a long and short stitch. I could not find orange rayon floss and white rayon will not dye. See photo below. The silk ribbon always dyes beautifully. So I used DMC cotton floss. I have 2 books and a DVD on Helen's patterns. These are beautiful and easy to work up. Everyone should have at least one of her books. I dream someday to do a large work of her patterns. This is added to my bucket list!!!

Melons, melons everywhere!! They have produced well and have been on a melon diet for the past month. That is humans, dogs, goat and chickens. Cat won't eat them!! LOL 

These went into a fruit cocktail. It is melons, strawberries and pineapple with a syrup of sugar, orange juice and pink lemonade. Froze up 20 quarts and will be delicious during the winter.

 

Scratch board, Tatting and Silk Ribbon

 We were given a scratch board at Art League for our project of the month. I decided to do a peacock using a sharp knife to sketch out the design.  I just laid out the peacock feathers and need to finish off the matt board. Might print out an all over design of peacock feathers on cotton or silk. Then glue it to the matt board.

Nancy Tracy has begun part 1 of a doily.  It will be an oblong doily and looking forward to part 2. The pattern can be found at www.be-stitched.com

One of my favorite motifs on a crazy quilt is Jane Eborall's wheel barrow (www.janeeborall.freeservers.com) . It is ready to be filled with silk ribbon flowers. 

 Here is some silk ribbon I dyed. It has all the wrinkles pressed out and some of it has been rolled on a TP holder. The holder is wrapped with acid free paper.  The fun is about to begin stitching silk ribbon flowers and bugs...

Works in Progress

The compass center is finished and sewen to the background fabric. The triangles are ready to sew.  This will be a good 2 year project for me. The block of the month is a 1790 Marriage coverlet titled, "Love Entwined".  It is beautifully designed out by Esther Aliu. For more information please visit Esther Aliu's blog, http://www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

 

I was not happy with the points on the first compass. The more I fiddled with it the points started to go missing. It makes a nice design for a bag.

 

Easy Street was started in January and finally started to put it together. However I have one glitch...The 15 inch blocks were a might too big for the other blocks. So I have to rip them apart and resew the seams 1/8 inch smaller. These 3 rows fit beautifully.

 

 

This is my noon time hand quilting project. My dogie, Tazzie, takes her nap and I quilt. One side is completed and the top I am working on is almost finished. Goal to have to done by Christmas. Hard to see but the center section is all quilted and ready to move to the next section.

 

One of my flower beds. The yellow coreopsis are going to seed. I have been collecting the seeds for next year. They do brighten up the garden!

The fruits of our labor. We had 5 muskmelons all ripe at the same time. This one is a 6 ponder! Lots of zukes and cukes. Picked all the big heads of cabbage and now eating the little ones (side shoots). Tomatoes are slowly getting ripe.

It has been almost 4 years since we have had RAIN, beautiful rain. Tonight I filled up two big rain barrels and 6 - 5 gal buckets. Water everywhere.  Hopefully the drought in the Southwest is over.