Basket quilt

No,this quilt has not been made by me. This is the latest quilt by my 85 year old mother-in-law.It measures about 50 by 50 inches. The center consists of small squares, 5/8 of an inch before seam allowance. How about that for eye sight at that age. Hilda sewed all the squares together by hand, first 10 in a row and then 10 rows together. Later these small squares were sewn together into long strips. Finally those long strips were sewn together.. Once the border was in place and marked she stuffed some of the flowers in the borders after which she quilted it by hand. It is from my mother-in-law that I learned about quilts. The first time I saw a quilting frame was in her "front"room. When we took over the dairyfarm, grandpa and her moved to the new house build at the corner of the farm. That was over 32 years ago. Ove the years she has helped me with countless projects. We each had our favorite part, for her quilting for me applique and (sometimes)piecing. But that is about to change. Grandma decided that it is time to move to a place where there is more help available. So....we are busy taking her around to see places, trying to set up an auction and trying to sell her house. So you see there is not much time for anything quilt related. It also does not help that I ordered a bushel of peaches. Each year I forget how many peaches there are in a bushel, but most have been canned or made into jam by now. So if this blog does not get updated for a few weeks, you know the reason.

New card

We have been invited to a wedding this coming week-end and I wanted to make a fabric card.First I looked around for the largest envelope I could find, in this case a 6 by 9 inch one and a smaller evelope to stuff something in.Once this far I found a left-over rose from last week's project and I was on my way. The background and leaves are machine quilted on a piece of thick quilt bat. Now how to fasten the small envelope under the rose? First I tacked the top halve of the rose down by hand. The next step was to find a small piece of Velcro. One side is sewn to the back of the rose, the other side to the background of the card. One problem solved. Next I glued another piece of Velcro to the back of the small envelope. It is easy to attach the envelope. Loosen the bottom part of the rose, stick the evelope under the rose and the Velcro will hold it in place. Instead of a binding I used a zigzag stitch around the outside.

Roses

This week I made this small quilt for my, almost, 90 year old mother in Holland. This is the third one in the series and is meant for the summer.I used some off white wired ribbon for the 3D roses. I painted the ribbon with Seta Colors I had on hand.One side is yellow, the other side has some red along the edge. The black and white checkered fabric I put in some left-over dye and it came out this lovely green. I wished I had used the whole meter, instead of a fat quarter. The border is another piece of fabric that I dyed last week. Now I have to find some time to machine quilt it. Then a quick trip to the post office and it will be on its way. I'm thinking of some maple leaves for the fall quilt. But this is August and I forgot how busy we are in good weather. The wheat has been combined here and at the neighbours and the straw is in the barn. I even helped this afternoon driving the tractor, so the job would be done before supper. And then there is the big tree with harvest apples. That means making apple sauce for the freezer.And the(early) sweet corn! We like to take the easy route, so we plant our sweet corn at the outside of one of the fields with a six-row corn planter. The corn is planted in no time, but if we win the yearly battle with the raccoons we have lots of corn, more than we can use. So dear friend Pat came over today and left with a car load and more friends have been contacted. And this is the early variety.....there is more to come.

Canadian Foodgrains Bank

On Saturday morning we went for a quick visit to the farm of Eunice and John Bosomworth near Ayton. They had an "open house" with the proceeds going to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (www.foodgrainsbank.com).In 1983 a group of churches started this foodgrains bank, so farmers could donate part of their crops for relief. Later the urban churches got involved. Often they would rent a field, pay for the inputs and donate the crops.With the low grain prices a group of churches in the area of Hanover tried something different. They asked if the Bosomworths would be willing to show their extensive collection of (mostly) John Deere tractors and implements and their Norwegian Fjorden Horses. So you can see there was something for both of us. The day was hot and sunny and when we got there the field was already full of parked cars. The horses were very friendly and quiet and took all the business in stride. The collection of tractors was amazing. We had to go from shed to shed. Too bad that the light inside was not very good for taking pictures. And ....it was very hot. We could not stay as long as we wanted. By noon the wheat was dry enough to start combining. Now we are glad we did not waste any time. After a few very hot and humid days we got rain and more rain. We did get our crop of, but only halve of our neighbour's. But it looks promising, the forecast predicts 4 or 5 sunny days. By next week I hope to have a picture of a new landscape. And I hope to get some help in doing a better job with this blog.