Planning the borders of the 3D Pinwheel quilt

I was able to finish sewing together the blocks to the 3D Pinwheel quilt.  I am now trying out some borders.  My daughter thinks the right side is too dark and I think the left side is too washed out.  I think we are both right, so this Saturday when I go for my Tiny Town appliqué class, I will be checking out some other options.

Just an FYI.  The true colours of the pinwheels are a bit brighter.  I feel if I take the pictures without natural lighting my iPad pictures seems to not be as good. But you get the picture. No pun intended.

Busy weekend

Yesterday was Mother's Day.  Hope everyone spent the day as they wished and enjoyed every minute of it.  I know I did.  It was busy, even with the rain.

I woke up early and had my tea while doing my Tiny Town block that is due this coming Saturday.  I did this until 9:00 am, when I decided I it was late enough in the morning to make noise outside.  I thought I would finish the curbs I was working on, but when I got outside I realized that I had to plant my tree.  Do you like it?  It is difficult to really see it on the tag.  It's a Eastern Redbud.  The picture is showing the tree limbs covered in small pink blooms.  The blooms are usually a light bright pink.

Before I got this one in the ground though I had to move some large bushes.  The back right hand corner is getting filled in.  Another bush and a few more perennials and it will be done.  If you can enlarge the picture you can see the dark green bush (the Yew) that I moved from another part of the garden.  The bush is currently 5' tall and will get to about 8'-10' tall when done, with a spread of 4'-5' wide.

Where the yew was I had a dwarf burning bush.  I moved it about 4' out in front of the yew.  Currently there are two dwarf burning bushes.  I am going to add another late in the season, because where I am going to put it is where the bleeding heart is.  The bleeding heart is looking pretty right now, so I don't want to disturb it.

In front of all this I have my Japanese maple that I only planted last year.  Once this corner matures a bit, it will fill in nicely.  The rest of the surrounding area is still a work in progress.  I worked on this corner yesterday, because while I sat in my chair drinking my tea and doing some needle work, with the sliding door open enjoying the breeze, I was constantly drawn to look outside. The birds were coming and going, eating from the feeder or looking for worms in the grass.  It was so peaceful.  I would look around and tell myself that I had to work on the garden.  So I did.

Just before the rain really started and set in I managed to finish all the transplanting.  After taking a shower to clean up from all the dirt, I sat down in my chair to admire the work.  I am quite happy with it.  Needs a little more but the main bones of the corner are in.  Now we wait for time to do its thing and mature the trees and bushes.

I settled down to do some more appliqué.  This is what I have done now.  I have part of a house to do, a bird house and part of the heart topiary.  I'm getting there.

I had a very nice Mother's Day.  Between all the above, my daughter woke up at 6:00 am to give me happy wishes and her gift to me (she had to go to work for 7:00 am).  My son made me French toast for breakfast and gave me happy wishes and his gift to me.  I made a simple chicken soup for lunch and for afternoon snack my daughter came home from work with a maple pecan Danish, which she served with a tea.  What can be better than that.  I did all the things that I like to do while being treated like royalty.  Life is good!!!

Nothing quilty to post about

Nothing quilty to post about today.  I haven't had much time this past week.  I was sick a few days, so nothing got done.  While on my last day in bed I wasn't well but not able to sleep, so my mind was racing.  This time it was about gardening.

I drew out some plans for my left side garden path and for my right side walkway that leads into a garden and sitting area.  This is what I came up with for the left garden path.  This side is not needed for utilitarian use just another way around the house.  I thought for this side I would do the whole thing in garden and have large stepping stones with maybe moss or a ground hugging ground cover between them, and just pack the space with flowers.  Maybe make it a destination with an arbor at the end of the path leading into the back yard.  

I will be putting three tall but slim trees between the houses, a couple of bushes and the rest perennials.  I am still planning things out at this point.  The following few pictures are going to be my inspiration.  Between the houses I have more space than this next picture, but it goes to show you that you can have a beautiful space even with minimal space.

This path is more free flow.  Like the effect of the ground cover between the stones.  Obviously I don't have this much space between the houses, but I just like the overall effect.  The anticipation of where the path is going to lead you to.  I want to try and achieve this, at the point of going around the corner of the house and into the backyard.

This next picture kind of does the same thing with the curved pathway.  All of the pictures are beautiful in their own way.  I am hoping to get some bits and pieces of all of them, in my small space.

Today was such a beautiful day out, that I decided to start the walkway leading to the backyard on the right side of the house.  This path has to be at least four feet wide as it will be the only way to get large things in or out of the back yard.  Got off to a late start with running around for all the supplies I needed, but I did get started.

I dug out a trench along the property line along the fence to put some lime stone and lay down my curb stones.  The curb stones will be there to contain the crushed stone and interlocking bricks for my path.  I ran into a problem, so had to call it a night while I went to get another drill bit to make the holes for the rebar.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, so I may want to take the day for me, but we will see.  It is taking shape already, so I may not want to stop.

Tiny Town progress on block two

Yesterday was another beautiful day.  The sun was out, but not too hot.  I did some clean up in the garden, while my niece and her husband came over to use the BBQ and their kids horses around with my son.  I took a bit of time to check out all the different plants sprouting and the tulips in bloom.  Even some of the trees are in flower.  At this house, I only really started playing in the garden last year, so this year I am seeing the changes take shape.  It's nice to watch.

Before I got out into the garden I had my morning tea while working on my hand appliqué.  Block number two is due by May 16th.  Two weeks have passed and I have completed a building per week as was required to keep on top of it.  I even assembled the top half of the block.  You will have to ignore the purple hexagons.  I have my block on the design wall right below the floret row.

These buildings are a house and a barn.  Do you like my daisies in the window box.  I do.

This one is the bottom half of block two.  I have two weeks less one weekend left to go before the meeting, so I have to work on one building and one side decoration per week.  

This block is going to be colourful.  I like this block with the topiary and the bird house.  I really like the background of this one too!  The background was designed to appear like salvages sewn together.  There are the dot colour lines and the words.  In this case the words are not the designer and name of the pattern.  In this case the words are quilting related, like quilting forever, sew happy, 100% cotton, I run with scissors, I'm creative...you can't expect me to be neat too, and make do and mend.  It's cute!

Teddy bear quilt, part 5

So, finally here is the grand finally.  Now don't peek to the end, there are just a few more blocks to show you before you get to see the whole quilt.

This first block is cute.  We have two sleeping bears.  Looks like when you put a stuffed bear back on the shelf.  The Bears have the mini bear paw blocks below them.

Just above the sleeping bears you have a bear sitting up and leaning against a pillow.  The pillow has real lace trim.  Above this bear is the mini sail boat blocks.

To go with all the mini sail boat blocks, we have the bear sailor with his cap and stripes.

Lastly, we have a girl sitting amongst the flowers watching a butterfly.  Pretty.

Here comes what you have all been waiting for.......the completed quilt.  Isn't it beautiful.  So much detail.  While I am looking at the entire quilt, I realize that I didn't get a picture of all the different borders.  If you enlarge the picture you can see that all the blocks have there own borders.

The Christmas bear has wreaths along the left, the pj bears have hearts along their left and the rocking horse bears have mini rocking horse blocks on the bottom and right.  Did I mention in a previous post, that all the rocking horses have actual hair for their mains.

I can't get over how much work is involved in the making of this quilt.  The pictures do not do the quilt justice.  The quilt is amazing.

Teddy bear quilt, part 4

We're getting close to the reveal.  Next bear post will do it.  Today we have another row of bears.  These ones are standing around in different outfits.

This first picture shows a girl bear dressed up in a dress, another bear wearing a night cap, and a third bear dressed up in a black suit and red vest.  As you can see this row is bordered top and bottom with small bear paw blocks in various colours.

After the bear in a suit we have another girl bear wearing a simple party dress carrying balloons.  Beside her is a sleepy bear wearing a yellow sleeper, and beside him is a bear wearing overalls with a stripped bandana to match his pant cuffs.

There is the first white bear I recall seeing with a pretty pink bow around her neck.  Next to her is a boy bear wearing nickers with a red tie and matching cap. Do you see his suspenders?

This last part of the row is a cool bear wearing a hat (sorry, not sure the type), and his jacket and pants.  The last bear in the row is a chubby bear wearing overalls.

A lot of bears marching in a row across the quilt  All in different colours and variety of attire.  A lot of details too.  All the tiny pieces would have taken lots of patience.

Teddy bear quilt, part 3

The Bears continue.  There are numerous bears doing different things on this quilt.  As I said before, there is so much going on it was difficult to know we're to start. Your eyes just wanted to keep going to take it all in.

This teddy bear and bunny friends is close to the middle of the quilt. 

There was a row of skating bears first the girl bear being dragged by the boy in overalls.

And another girl bear being lead by a boy bear.  They are all skating in a row.  The girls right hand is holding the boy from the picture above.

Here I kept the best for last in this batch.  We have a bride and groom all decked out in their refineries.  If you can get up close you will see the 3D wedding dress and flowers.  The wedding dress is all done up in lace.  This was very intricate.  I don't think I would have had the patience to handle gathering all the lace and sewing all the 3D flowers in the bouquet and in the hat.  It was stunning in person.

Only a couple more post until the great big reveal!!!  Stay tuned.