A Finished Quilt Top

Well, to all intents and purposes I have a finished quilt top.  It's been a long time coming and not without a couple of hiccups, which involved a lot of unpicking, measuring, remeasuring,  inserting strips, trimming blocks and then resewing the affected blocks together.  It measures roughly 70' x70"

In hindsight I  should have built rows around the very centre block, rather than making strips, and rows to piece together, that required gaps to be filled.  The quilt is a mix of English paper pieced blocks, hand sewn to background fabrics, foundation paper pieced blocks and machine pieced strips.

I plan to hand some applique along some of the low volume areas around the centre block, so am currently working on making components for this.  I'm also deciding whether to piece a backing and try and use up some of my stash or just use a wide backing fabric from my quilter. 

I need to think of a name for this quilt, I can't keep calling it the make it up as I go quilt. 

Bouquets and Garden Musings

 

One of the things I really love about summer is all the flowers that I can grow in my garden and pick for bouquets for the house or for friends.  Over winter my garden doesn't get much sun, so is usually pretty bare of anything pretty.

This year I have grown my dahlias, and even though people say they are easy care, they are finicky at times, they wilt with not much water, rot with too much water, ants seem to like making nests in the tubers, so they die,  and they succumb to mildew.

Zinnias, I find to be much hardier, and pretty easy to grow from seed, and the flowers are interesting all the way through the blooming process.  I love the range of colours and sizes.  Cactus type zinnias are my new favourites.

this summer I have have also tried growing :

- aster, which are quite long lasting when picked, and I will be getting more colours for next summer, - -- phlox, creme brulee a pinky beige coloured flower

- calendula which was pretty easy to grow from seed

- coreopsis, not such a great germination rate but I'll persevere with these next summer.

Next summer I'm going to relocate all my dahlia tubers and plant more zinnias and aster in their spaces.

Winter garden plans have seen me buy more daffodilt bulbs for growing in pots on my deck, much as I'm not really a fan of yellow flowers, I do like their cheery welcoming glow when I see them first thing in the morning  or after work as the brighten up my deck area.