Dyed Yarn

Pansies I love them. How could I not dye some yarn to look like Pansies. I love this yarn. I have used a sock yarn base with some nylon in the yarn. I love all the purples I got in there. Then the shots of yellow and pink. 

I have done it into a cake already. This might have to be knitted in to socks soon. 

I did this sock yarn too. I kept the repeat a little shorter on this one. I kind of hope the purple might join up when done in socks. We will see. 

Now this one is not easy to wrap. It should give me strips in the three colour families. The pink will be repeated between the blue and green. It will be fun to see how it goes. I wish I had kept track of how many repeats are in the one ball. 

Also caked up to start anytime now. 

I got swishy mail yesterday! My yarn for dying has arrived. I am not sure what I will dye next but I am thinking more flower colours. 

Inspiration can be found! I might have to take more photos this year.  

Look at the dahlias. I had to buy one of these. Kind of wish I could have a whole garden of them. We will see how it does. About 10 years ago I planted some Dahlias and the bugs yuck. I had crazy black aphid things all over them.  I hope they do not show up again. We will see. 

Here is my dad also picking out some dahlias for his pots. This is the Best! the first day at the green house! I love that my dad and I got do this together.  Turns out last year the 29th of April was also our first day to the green house. It was after 6 weeks of lock down because of Covid. And we still live this covid lockdowns. Not much has changed except we have found a few better ways to live. I got one vaccine so far. 

Stay safe! 

To Garden is to have Hope! 

Socks Started

 I started another pair of socks. This yarn is knitting up so pretty. I loved the colours and thought it was going to be much more random. But look at the twist of colours I am getting. I makes me think of gardening and some of the flowers I might plant. I should say I got this yarn at Blackbird Knitting and Embroidery They are local to me, in the nearest city, Leduc, AB, right on main street. It was a good price too, under $12.00. 

I have joined some local garden pages. We get a lot of winter and cold, so we are some of the last to put our plants out. This year I will start a few plants inside. We also are planning a green house for the early days of spring. Below are 2 of my large pots from this past year. 

Planting a garden is having HOPE. 

Succulent Pots

I have been playing with my plant this spring. I finally have enough little succulents to make up some new pots. First was to clean up my fish bowl and replant it. So cute. 

I used used older clay pot here. I also had a ceramic ornament to add in. 

3 new pots

Well after taking photos of my new pots an idea hit. I added some shells and sand dollars. It sure makes the fish bowl look fuller. 

Cute little plants and shells. I am sure by next year the shells might be hard to find. 

Summer is Long Gone

It has been a few months since summer flowers looked this good. I look back at the photos of my flowers and it is hard to believe they are real. I have done so many things in the last few months. Lets see if I can get caught up a little. 

I finished these socks. I got the yarn from Twisted Sister Mill just down the road from me. I did the dying to get the great colour. Each sock was a ball and I left it in a ball to dye. First dying it 3/4 blue then flipping it and dying it 3/4 Magenta. So lots of purple resulted and the center of the ball is lighter coloured. 

These 2 pairs each got 2 new toes. I always wear out the bottom ball part of the foot so I like to fix it by knitting new toes on. 

All in the sunshine.

Wearing my new socks. I might be ready for winter. So far we have only had a little dash of snow and then it was gone. We maybe getting some white crap this week. 

Fabric all picked out ready for the next new quilting project. 

Can you guess what it is? 

Hint what time of year is it? 

answer - Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilt time. 

Black Friday she releases the first clue and we all start her mystery quilt called Allietare. 

My aunt was on the trip to Italy with her this year.  

Design Wall Monday Sept 22

I did a couple of block exchanges using Kaffe Fasset collection this year. I finally got them up on the wall. This was one of the groups. Each person send a block to everyone and I sent them a block. I have 4 blocks I did in here. I am not sure if this is how I will sew then or not. Some blocks read like one fabric and have very little contrast in it. I not sure what to do. 

Fall today, so it is time for a summer wrap up, stuff I forgot to post. 

These Jars are canned and dying my fabric. My Surface Design Group got together earlier in Sept and did the canning over an outdoor fire. We gathered many different natural weeds and plants around our homes so that we could try natural dying. The top right is my flowers. The other red one is Chockcherries. We also used golden rod, tansy (a yellow weed brought to american for dying), wild sage,  and some kind of nut thing (forgot the name) on the far left. We added metals also. most of mine have iron- rusty nails, or brass/copper from shell casings. All of my jars sealed, so I can leave then to brew for a few months. I may even leave them till spring. I have some cotton and some wool fabric in each jar. Hope it works. Sure was fun to plan and gather all the plants. 

My new pots. Last winter my husband ran over my two big pots and this spring he bought me 3 new pots. I kept forgetting to take a photo. So this is earlier in Sept when we got snow on the ground. I was using the agility jump standards to help protect the plants when I put a blanket over the flowers. To bad I did not get a better photo when they were looking so nice. 

Gemma and I on our summer holiday last month. 

I have added this post to Judy's Design Wall Monday

Red Flower

I got one red flower block done this week. Not much for scrap busting. I did a few yellow ones last year but I can not find the photo. I am sure it is somewhere. I still have a few red blocks I want to get done and then there is the catching up from the other months, yellow, and green also have some work left. As you can see these are many year projects.

Happy Sunflowers. It is an older photo but maybe you can see the block looks a little like a sunflower. If not, What kind of Red flower does it look like? 

I have linked up with SoScrappy.

Gemma Pup and I went to Dock Dogs today. We got a 3rd place in junior. We had so much fun. 

Thanks for stopping by today. 

Scrap Quilt

Love the scrap quilts. This is another customers quilt that I was asked to quilt. It is so much fun to look at all the different fabrics used. I have some of these fabrics. I love how much lime green is in this quilt. 

She saw my leaves and loops quilting pattern and asked me to do that quilting on hers. I think she was very happy with it. 

So nice to give the completed (or almost completed) quilts back to customers. 

More flowers in my garden. This white rose is very smelly. 

Today my Surface Design Group is off to go shopping for some wool and lunch. We are also going to start to gather plant for some natural dying. We may have to stop on the road sides to gather our weeds. Later this summer and early fall we hope to try natural dying. 

Great Customers

I have a few more quilts I have done for my customers that I need to show off. One friend worked last summer do the machine applique on this quilt then left it with me to quilt well she was down south for the winter. So this was done a while back I just forgot to make a post about it.  I just love her work. 

Every part of this quilt was so well done. It ways makes my work easy to work on her work. 

This side view shows off the quilting a bit better. 

I still have so room to do more machine quilting this summer. So if you need a top quilted just let me know. 

I have many flowers blooming in my garden. I took a quick photo of my large rocks and wagon wheel. I have a white rose flowering in the back there. It is so smelly. To do not for get to stop and smell the roses today. 

A Weeks Worth in one post

Crazy busy week and all cramped in one little post. I did get some light Blue scraps done for my Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2013. I worked on the Jack in the Box blocks. 

I got four blue ones and one Red on done. I still need a few more red ones. 

I am also trying to get all the spools done. So a few blue ones but then a mix of other colours. I have added this post to Soscrappy Saturday's linky party. 

Wednesday was our 20th anniversary and my husband got me Roses.

Then Friday was my birthday. My mom gave me a cute fat quarter with lady bugs and matching scissors with a zinger. Just one of my gifts. This is the start of the month of Cake. We have a few more birthdays in the family with in the next three weeks. 

I am trying to get some binding done. I have quilted a few of my projects over the past month and now it is binding time. We have the Leduc Black Gold Quilt Patch Quilt Show in Oct so it is get it done time. I have added this to Kathy's Quilts for slow Sunday stitching. 

We had a little frost this week so today was time to get all of the garden in. Here are some tomatoes and squash. 

WIP Plants

I have to thank my quilt friend Diane (from my Surface Design Group) for helping me with some plants for this little project. Just as quilters will share fabric they will also share plants with others that garden. I saw some Terrariums on different web sites and the local greenhouse, and just wanted to make my own. I thought my Hens and Chicks would be perfect. But my Hens and Chicks had winter killed in the garden. So I called a few friends that quilt and garden. I traded some hand dyed thread for some plants. 

I had the glass jar. I had bought it at a garage sale a few years back. I had the blue/white plant and the little lacy one. So with little cost to me, I have a new plant feature. My mom is laughing at me and said they did this back in the 60's. I think it is cute. 

More Gardens

The blue irises are not in my garden. I took the photos in May at the Penticton Convention Center, were Quilt BC was. They were perfect that week. 

I have added this post to The Needle and Thread Network blog. My post today may not be much about stitching today but if not for stitching I may not have so many good friends to share plants with. 

Scrap Saturday Pumpkin

I have a little more to show for Scrap Saturday. I have been working on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2012 all year. Hard to believe we are in the home stretch for the year, three and a half months left. I am going to do more next year too. I just love working on different blocks each month.  I still need one more of these 12 inch blocks in orange before the month is up.

Here are 9 orange hexagon flowers done so far. I only started to make these last month in the turquoise. I guess you could say I have more work to do on these. I am thinking I will appliqué these to a base but I am not sure what or how I will use them.

The spools are part of the Leaders and Ends Challenge that Bonnie Hunter put out around Aug 20th last month. I love these little 3 inch spools. I did get a few more done this week.

All my orange so far this month. I have added this post to Soscrappy linky party, go see the other orange going on this month.

I picked these last night just before supper. Good thing we got frost last night. I was not excepting frost and did not pick or cover my tomatoes next to the house, we will see if I will get damage or not. Do you see the big kid on the lawn tractor in the far background. Crazy grass keeps growing, maybe the frost will slow it down.