A little of this.....

It has been a beautiful week and Laurence is busy planting corn. This is the earliest he has ever done this. Here we are only a few weeks since the snow is gone and I hear muttering about needing rain already. The daffodils are in full bloom and the tulips are up. And winter is forgotten. I have been busy putting the borders on the postcard quilt and it is going better than I expected. The 2 short sides are finished. As you can see I need a large area. The cards are stif, so most of the quilt has to lay flat, while I sew.
I also found out, that 6 inches for one does not seem to be the same as for another. The bottom row of cards was uneven and I finally got brave and cut a small piece of some of the cards and now it looks much better.I hope to be done by the end of the week. Yesterday I was in town and next week I can pick up a large carpet roll at the local flooring center. That will be the only way to transport it.
On Sunday we were invited to Jenny's inlaws to join them for dinner and a visit to the Chinese Orchid Show in Toronto. I have never seen so many orchids in so many shapes and forms. I wish I had taken my "good" camera. And of course there was a merchant's mall. And here it was the same as at a quilt show. Lots of people making lots of purchases. We could not be left behind and came home with some "special"( at least for me) ones. Now I hope that they will grow.
Monday evening was the annual dinner for the Mennonite Relief Sale. Everything for the evening has been donated, from the hall, kitchen to the food. That all for over 700 people. The ticket sales and further donations are used for the expenses for the relief sale. Every dollar made at the sale is turned over to the Mennonite Central Comittee. As usual there were about 30 bedsize quilts hanging around the hall. The top one is the feature quilt for this year. An 80 year old lady embroidered this one and it was hand quilted by her church.
This one was made by children in Sunday School, put together and quilted by members of the church.
The postcard quilt will be at the sale next year. So I do have some time, but it is always nice to get it done way early, so it can be displayed at different places.

Guild meeting

Lately it takes me a whole day to go to our 2 hour guild meeting in the afternoon.This morning I left at 8.30 and did most of my running around before the meeting at 1.30. The rest was done after and I made it home in time to have supper on the table at the regular time. Now that spring is here that is very important.. Hubby is out in the fields as we speak with spring planting just around the corner he claims. And this is what the car looked like. Pansies to pot up for a gift this coming week-end. A big bag of citric acid for the chickens and groceries for us.
Behind the seat the sewing machine, that I had taken in because it made "weird noises". ( it just needed some adjustments), a bag with the orchid quilt, more fabric I needed for the post card quilt and copies to be used in workshops. The rest is on the front seat.
Florence did a very good job in hand quilting the orchid quilt. Part of the quilting was done in sashiko, just as with the crane quilt. I'm very pleased with the result. The binding will have to wait for a while. I'm also planning to put some piping on. Right now I want to finish the postcard quilt far enough to get the rest quilted.
The last few days have been very nice and now I can see all the damage that has been done over the winter. The bunnies have been very busy and eaten a lot of things. Our dog just did not do her job this winter.
Daily new plants pop up. This one, I think called a frittilaria, grows every day by inches.
Now that the weather is nice, it is very hard for me the stay inside and work on quilts. I need to set myself a time line and try to stick to it.

Plodding along

I got some more work done on this quilt. The borders are 14 inches wide,but I think it will look better if I narrowed them down to about 11 inches. In the corners I made 2 mariner compasses. Two more to go in the bottom corners. If you have a look at the picture below you can see a third compass on the right. While I was working on that one yesterday everything went wrong and it is not usable. But I put it there to see if some added smaller compasses in the centers of the borders would add to it. And I think it does. These will only be 6 inches. Now I will have to be sure I have enough fabric.
But it will have to wait a few days. I'm all packed and ready to go. Tomorrow morning I will drive to Haliburton for a trunk show and then on Thursday a workshop.
The weather is great. Where yesterday there were only a few narrow leaves showing, there were crocusses today. Now we can also see what has to happen to the lawn. As soon as I'm back I will have to start cleaning and raking.
Today I found pots with pansies at a local nursery and I could not resist. Nothing brightens things up better near the back door than a big pot of pansies.

Good intentions

Yesterday promised to be a quiet day with lots of time for sewing. I did have to do some bookkeeping, since the accountant was coming today for the year end of the farm. So far so good. But then there was a knock on the door. A big box with things from Holland was finally delivered. When my mother passed away in January, we had to clean out her appartment and I had some things I wanted to have send over. The box about 100 by 90 by 60 cm. was send by air and took 4 days from Holland to Waterloo. The last 50 km took 10 DAYS. But when I got everything unpacked nothing was broken. This quilt was one of my first ones and I made it for my parents, who had it on a wall for over 12 years and it is still in good condition. I used a collection of neck ties from friends and family members, both in Holland and Canada. The piece of paper with all the names was still attached to the back. It was sobering to see how many had passed away since the quilt was made. During the unpacking I realized that our dog was not herself and we ended up taking her to the vet. clinic. She is quite sick with an infection and is still there on i.v.
Since it was on our way, we drove on and picked up our seed corn. By the time we got home it was supper time. Then hubby decided we should go to the local farm show and there went the evening. So no sewing got done. Today was a little better. The accountant is gone and there is an hour yet before I have to start supper.

I like to keep my amarillis bulbs from year to year. I planted some at the end of January and the first one is blooming with 2 others to come soon.
This one even has a second flower coming up. These blooms and the sun outside make all the difference. Now we know, that spring cannot be far away. Today I noticed the daffodils coming up.