Finally......

I feel like I have accomplished something......finally. The farm is ready for quilting. The foliage of the trees is missing, but I will machine quilt the sky and the tree trunks first. It will be easier that way. Than put the foliage on and quilt the rest. The orchids are also ready for quilting. This morning I took the rest of the paper out of the back and pressed the top. I have not quite decided, but I think that hand quilting would look better. At first I thought some more sashiko in the dark areas of the border might work, but now I think that it might get too busy. Maybe some sashiko with a light colored regular quilting thread. So you can see it, but just barely.

Yesterday I took my quilts in for our bi-annual quilt show and on my way home stopped at the Creative Sisters quilt store in Kitchener. They had their monthly "full moon madness sale"
I did very well and found fabric for the back of the orchid quilt, red and green batiks for the Marnier Compass quilt I will make for our son's wedding and blue batiks for the project below.
I also picked up 3 more returned postcards at the MCC office for my next project. The total now is 53 returned from the 80- send out in the spring. A few straglers might show up, but next week I will start with this project.







These pictures show you the back and front of the 3 cards I picked up.
I have it all figured out in my head, but now we will see if it is possible. The first step is to make a piece in the "trip around the worls" pattern and have that quilted for a base.

It has been a dry year

Yesterday my friend Betty came for a chat. She has moved further away, so we do not see each other very often. But she will stop on her way to Kitchenere once in while. Since her husband and her travel a lot, she decided to store her threads in plastic boxes. That meant, that these 2 (yes, there is a second one) beautiful, wooden spool racks were not used anymore. And they are mine to do with what I please.
I will not have any problems filling them ,though it will not all be threads, once I get Laurence convinced to get the drill out and put some screws in the wall.
She had some beautiful quilts along also. These will be in our bi-annual show next week.
The Waterloo County Quilters Guild will have their quilt show next week, September 28 and 29 at the RIM Center in Waterloo.

The last week has been very busy with other things than quilting. I did get a few orchids done, but there are still 3 more and a few buds.
We are busy with the harvest. The yields have been disappointing, but this morning we heard on the radio, that this year has been the dryest on record in our area, not a surprise really. Going by that, it could have been worse.
The white beans are off and next will be the soybeans and the planting of winterwheat.
The harvest is about 2 to 3 weeks earlier than normal. I try to stay home as much as possible during that time. Mid September has been a safe time to book a trunkshow/workshop, but not this year. In a few hours I will be on my way to Chattam for a trunkshow tonight and a workshop tomorrow.
Got to run. The call to help move equipment from one place to the other just came.
One thing we cannot complain about this week, is the weather. Sunny and up to 28C

Woodstock, Ontario that is

We are in the second week of September and that means for the farmers in this area one thing, the Outdoor Farm Show near Woodstock.Today was our day and we left early, because we had free entry tickets and free breakfasts, thanks to hubbie's involvement with the Soil and Crop Association and a sponsoring Company. And a good breakfast it was! Later it was for lunch to a special, and free, BBQ lunch for poultry producers, also good. In between we could get water, coffee, apples, popcorn, candies, all free. And in the afternoon the wheelbarrows with peanuts in the shell were placed all over the grounds. By missing the cup playing a golf game, I even got a ticket for a free ice cream cone.
Total cost for the three of us ( a niece went along for the day), was 75 cents to upgrate to a waffle cone for the ice cream.
And what did I learn? Not much, just that things change fast in agriculture, just like everywhere else. The machinery is getting bigger and more expensive. More computers and GPS. More rules and regulations.
And hubby had a good look at some pieces of equipment, that he thinks need to be upgraded, but that will have to wait till winter.
It looks like tomorrow will be a sunny day and that means the start of the bean harvest. So more time outside for me.
I have been working on the last orchid and this is what I have accomplished so far. There are 8 more flowers to do.

Last days of summer

We can notice, that summer is nearing the end. Evenings are cooler and at times a jacket comes in handy. Saturday I picked some flowers and leaves around the house. Jenny gave me a handy tool for using with flower arrangements, that I had not used yet.
It did work very well. It fits in the large vase and holds the flowers and leaves straight.
Around it,but inside the vase, I put some hosta leaves to conceal it.
The begonias are at their best, but they are better left outside.
Back to quilting. Whatever I had in mind for the front of the farm did not work. Instead I appliqued one piece along the front, what seems to work much better. I cut the pieces for the border and pinned them on the board. And there it will sit for a few weeks, while I will be looking at it. I wonder if I should quilt the sky, before I will sew the foliage of the trees down. It would make it much easier.


I think I have to machine quilt it, because in places there are a lot of layers of fabric.
And it will need some more hand embroidery.
While I'm taking a break from this one, I picked up the quilt with the orchids. The 2 orchids at the bottom were finished a while ago and by that time I had run out of steam. This time I managed to come up with suitable orchids for the top. This one is a pansy orchid and as the name implies, it looks a lot like a pansy. The leaves and stems are sashiko, done with 2 different kinds of variegated thread. It looks nice, but the extra thickness made it hard to pull the needle through the fabric. I hope to get this side done this week. Than it is one to the last side, all ready to go.

My goal is to get both tops ready for quilting by the end of the month. We have our guild quilt show (Waterloo County Quilters Guild) on the last week-end in September and after that's all behind me, I want to start on the "postcard" quilt for the MCC sale. I'm just hoping for a few more cards to return!