Spring Flowers Quilt

My honeysuckles are in bloom. Now I know that honeysuckles aren't the flashiest of flowering shrubs, but while drinking my coffee on the porch this morning, all I could hear was the drunken humming of honey bees.  They were so busy and so laden with pollen that they could hardly fly and seemed to be walking from blossom to blossom.   This time of year is always a miracle of colour and sound.  As I write, the smell of lilacs slips by and the nest of blue jays in the maple are demanding more food, more food.  There's nothing like winter to make you appreciate spring.

Speaking of flowers, I finished the quilt made from my bee friends' flower blocks.  I have very unimaginatively called it spring flowers.  I decided to sash the individual flowers with fabric that remind me of grass.  Keeping with the analogy, for the binding I chose a fabric that could be imagined as a picket fence if you look closely.

Should I have sashed it in white, probably, but it's bright and happy and it will likely cheer up someone's bed at the nursing home my mother lives in.

The fun thing about online bees is that a group of strangers get together and trust each other enough to send blocks made with their favourite fabrics.  For me it's like Christmas when the blocks arrive.  Sometimes the fabric is exactly what I would have bought and sometimes not, but they always play well together.

The back is a perfect example of why we should measure twice and cut once.  I did not!

I tried to casually toss the quilt over the honeysuckle bushes, but the wind kept thwarting my art shots!

Here it's casually draped over the cover to the spring (supplies water to our house and barn).  In the background you can just see one of the raised vegetable beds.

I'm linking up to Sew Fresh Quilts, so have a good look at all that creativity out there. Sadly, this is the last week of The Needle and Thread Network and I would like to thank her for creating a space for us to show our work.

Heart Happy

This month I made hearts for my bee blocks and really like them.  Somehow, in my mind, there's nothing like patchwork and just digging out all my scraps from the pink/purple and the blue/teal stash piles made me happy.  It leaves chaos in sewing world, but that's all right.  I particularly like the little birds I fussy cut for each block.

After this exercise I realized that my stash was actually getting low.  Last year I swore not to buy anything except solids until a significant dent was made on the shelves.  I have been very successful at that, so today I went shopping to an actual fabric store and browsed their cotton remnants.  I used to buy all my fabric on line, but with the Canadian dollar so low compared to the American, I don't do that anymore.

In particular, I was looking for greens and was successful! Although, the colours look a lot fresher in person than in the photo.

I was looking for something different to sash my rolling stone blocks and decided on a green fabric that made me think of buds and branches.  I think it plays well with the blocks.

With the beautiful spring weather there's been lots of outside work to be done, but at least Neil got his potatoes planted.  He doesn't care about anything else, but spuds are the high point of any meal in his opinion! He's a true country boy.

Kickstart

I feel that if I don't just write something, I might fall off the face of the virtual world forever.  I'm at a low ebb creatively.  When we got back from Australia, we went from this-

to this-

and I think my body and brain just went into hibernation in protest!

But, this morning the sun is shining, the snow has melted, and I decided to dust off my camera and set off on a photo shoot/morning walk and find beauty where I am.

I think daffodils and spring bulbs are my favourite flowers, probably because our souls are crying out for colour and there they are!

The little blue ones are loving the long, cool spring and are everywhere on the lawn.

The willows at the pond are trying their best to burst into leaf.

A pair of geese has set up shop on one of the back ponds and have a lot to say about my visiting their territory.

The pond is waiting for warm days, but I was delighted to see that the swallows have returned for the summer.  So many of our regular birds don't seem to be here and what I read about bird loss is very disturbing.

More shrubs waiting to burst into leaf.

Our vegetable beds are freshly filled with manure and waiting for the ground to warm up.  

So, having done this exercise, forcing myself to get back to the blog, I realize how much I have to be grateful for and feel like perhaps I can approach sewing world with some ideas and joy.