This is my hibiscus with a flower in full bloom yesterday. I just love the brilliant yellow shading into red. There are three more flowers about to open – not today, but in the next day or two.
I had to visit a nearby garden centre to pick up some potting soil. I saw this canna lily and couldn’t leave without it. The colours complement the hibiscus and make a very cheerful focus among the greenery on my deck.
This is now the view from my living room window. The back fence is gone, and half of my container garden has been discarded. There’s still a bit of finishing work to do – it’ll get done tomorrow. The finished deck is a 20′ wide x 16′ deep construction, raised above the ground an average of 8″. Now there will be space to have friends over for tea!
I had already begun this pair of socks, almost ready to turn the heel on the first sock when a friend asked me to knit a pair of socks for her husband – she’d pay me of course. As always, the problem is the cost of a pair of my socks – I simply won’t work for less than $1 an hour!
As I turned the heel I realized I could just make a longer foot and then I’d have socks for Edouard. They’ll go in the mail to him today. As a gift.
The coreopsis in the garden bed across from my front door is in full bloom – it blooms all summer. I love these tiny delicate yellow flowers. They make me smile!
The pansies beside them have done well this year, too.
A couple of months ago a friend gave me this embroidered silk fabric in a bundle of silk fabrics she was discarding from her stash — a real find for me. This one I immediately thought would make an “elegant” shirt jacket (two of the other pieces are earmarked for a quilt).
So two days ago I finally cut the shirt out, being careful to match the sleeves, the two fronts, the cuffs, and especially the pocket. The under collar, inside collar stand, inside of the cuffs are done in a solid white silk dupioni which I bought through Etsy.
The real accomplishment was matching the two fronts across the front placket! It really was a lucky accident – because I was careful about matching the embroidery across the two fronts, it happened that the lines aligned across the placket. And the pocket matched exactly the embroidery beneath.
I plan to wear it with a shell underneath, and white pants, I think, at one of the family bar mitzvah gatherings.
Yesterday I finished this Lattice Quilt using Kaffe Fassett / Philip Jacobs large pattern fabrics. (The back used a Philip Jacobs fabric with an inserted crazy quilted piece.)
Cutting and assembling this quilt wasn’t the challenge; figuring out how to quilt the “blocks” was. In the end I set up an 8×8 design – 20 blocks in all (leaving some of the sashing unquilted), thirteen 3×8 blocks, two 3×3 blocks and then a design for the border.
This quilt has turned out a wee bit larger than my usual lap quilts – the design forced that – had to use an even number of blocks to make the lattice symetrical.
Ok, so the point is to use up the stash of yarn left-overs, to stretch them out with interspersing them with a blending colour yarn, pick up a colour in the blend for cuffs, heels and toes. But in this case it has resulted in a very boring pair of socks! It was so boring it was all I could do to finish the second sock.
Oh well, someone will love them. They’re now in the give-away pile (which continues to grow – gotta start giving those socks away).
Last evening I attended a lecture by Kaffe Fassett. Three of the local quilt guilds decided to work together and sponsor his visit to Nova Scotia. His talk was about “colour” – I’ve been following his work for years, beginning with his knitting books. His latest work has been quilts using fabrics he designs for Westminster Fabrics.
After the purge of my house last week, including the sewing room (I got rid of a lot of fat quarters and scraps I knew I was never going to use), I promised myself I was NOT going to buy any fabric — NO FABRIC, until I saw those luscious flowers in gold, pink, pale green, turquoise. And beside that bolt was the green dots, and then the pink houses… I added in the strong pink circles and a couple of others, bought a half meter of each. Then I came home and went through my Fossil Fern fat quarter collection (I still have about half of them unused) and picked out eight that I thought would work with the Kaffe Fassett prints.
These are more subtle than my usual quilt fabrics in shades I don’t usually gravitate toward, but last evening they called out to me.
I have no idea what kind of quilt I will make with this fabric collection. It might be several months before I think about using them but something interesting will get made.
We’ve got day lilies in one of the garden beds across from my town house. They’ve been blooming for the past 10 days or so. This plant is thriving this year with a gazillion blooms to come.
Bali is hot, and we also have a few hot days each summer here in Halifax. So I decided to make a pair of palazzo pants — loose fitting pants with a yoke that sits just below the waist.
This is the first pair — I used some of the katagami (Japanese batik) I bought several weeks ago. I’ve used this fabric in a couple of quilts (I backed one with it). It washes well, presses nicely and drapes softly.
The pattern I used didn’t have pockets (I added two on the front – deep enough to carry my phone in my pocket), and it had a side zipper. This pair I put in the side zipper with an added tab (with a button) at the top.
I’ve made a white and a navy pair – each with a fly-front which I prefer to a side zipper. I’ve got two more pair cut out – I think at least one of them I will cut off to a capri length.
Definitely comfortable. They’re not all for Bali (I’ll probably only take a single pair), but they’re great to wear in our weather which has been warm and humid for the last couple of weeks.
jmn 