A Pinwheel Quilt

Several months ago a truly generous reader and fellow quilt lover sent me two vintage quilt tops. The smaller one was these cheerful pinwheels. My mother just finished quilting it with perle cotton, a bright orange back, and some contrasting blue binding. My favorite part (not shown) is the little place she had to patch. A huge thank you to you, dear reader, whose email I cannot find!

Rooting a Cutting

"Good Enough and Done"

" . . . good enough and and done is a smarter choice than perfect, and simply making a choice is often a sign of maturity, balance, and contentment."

--Myquillyn Smith, The Nesting Place 

A Little Quilting Progress

Clara gets the credit for these rows. These diagonals are hard! It's harder to steer, and we're doing the rows an inch apart, rather than two. That's twice as many rows, but the quilt will be gorgeous.

Velvet Nubbins

We are all getting our money's worth out of Sister--endless entertainment as well as softness. 

In this house her paws are known as the velvet nubbins (more specifically, velvet forenubbins and velvet hindnubbins).

Anyone would like this cat.

Oil Painting: White Orchids

Continuing to love my Tuesday evenings in the painting studio. This started out being about the pink lilies you see in the background, then turned out to be about the white orchids you see in the foreground.

A Chambray Dress for Daisy

Sewn for Daisy earlier this summer out of a very light, silky chambray. I don't have a go-to pattern for her at the moment so this is very much a mishmash of various elements to get the pleated skirt and the semi-Peter Pan collar I envisioned.

Tablescape with Tea

Daisy's Life with Chickens

I found her reading with a chicken feather decorating her hair.

Alabama Chanin Bolero: Magdalena in Wine

And in the category Took Forever/Worth It, this bolero in Wine cotton jersey, stenciled with the "Magdalena" stencil, stitched in embroidery floss, then reverse appliqued (that just means the stenciled shapes are cut out after they are stitched around). 

These little jackets are perfect for me. I wear them over matching and non-matching jersey dresses. They are just big enough to host a Stitching Statement without taking a year to make, and they are big enough to let you really develop the pattern but not make you crazy.

The Magdalena stencil, which I downloaded and cut out of acrylic pennant felt, is enormous, and interestingly runs from a very small scale design to a much larger scale. You can play with this when placing the stencil on your pattern pieces.

Donkey Bits

I was down in the pasture first thing this morning to clear chicken manure out from under the roosting box (I like to celebrate nice weather). The donkeys were, as always, in my business. Those are Burley's ears. Baby donkeys are really good at ears full of fluff.

I have made *great* strides taming Dolly. Who knew? Now she lets me clip the rope onto her halter and walk her around. Next we're going to learn to take the halter off and put it back on, so she doesn't have to have it on all the time.

Also, here's Burley's nose for you. It's also great.

Bowlful of Grapes

I totally get that apples and peaches grow on real trees, and berries come from real vines and bushes, but somehow it's hard for me to wrap my head around real grapes coming from real vines!

Probably because I've rarely picked them myself. I didn't pick these either, but the Composer stopped by a fruit place and brought home huge quantities of these.

Daisy's Cardboard Village

When I visited my mother yesterday she wanted to stop in at Hobby Lobby, and we spotted these adorable plain brown houses just right for Daisy and her Little Animals.

They are sturdier than cardboard (they're labelled paper mache), and the roofs come off like lids, and you can color them.

And they're very inexpensive--I think the largest was $7 (and there's always that coupon code . . .) The timing was perfect for Daisy, as she had recently acquired a goat postman. Now he's got somewhere to deliver the mail

The Backyard this Afternoon

We are all pleasantly disoriented by this crazy cool weather. The house open in late August? What planet is this? I sat and sewed outside before dinner.

A Corner of Clara's Green Room

 I know you can't see the new floor and the rest of the white furniture, but here's a corner of Clara's fresh green room. I love the dark wood against the light green, and the little Clara details here and there.

Piecing a Log Cabin Quilt: Ashes and Roses

I frequently find that one quilt top leads to another . . . hence this second version of Ashes of Roses. I'm calling this one Ashes *and* Roses, because I actually segregated the pinks and the grays in fine log cabin style. Not my usual. 

We will start quilting when the temperature drops just a little bit more, although I can't miss this opportunity of saying Thank You Lord!! for the coolest middle of August I can remember.

Bella with the Big Boy

Piecing a New One: Apple Orchard

I started a large log cabin quilt this week--42 blocks, each seven strips across. Last night I finished the last square, and today Clara helped me lay them out and sew them together.

Freshwater Shells

A friendy day for Daisy looking for shells along the lakeshore, then playing dress-up at home with a friend and the world's best kitten.

Oil Painting Inspiration: Scottish Florals

I'm loving the fresh and gorgeous, almost-primitive florals of these two Scottish painters:

Alison McWhirter (above) and Mhairi McGregor (below).

(all images from Google images)

So Much Excitement in the Laundry Room

It's the time of year for domestic renewal: I threw out the old laundry hampers and bought new plastic baskets that actually sort of fit in the shelves of the laundry room. Now I have four instead of three (white, light, dark, delicate) which is just right, and they are off the floor! The room seems twice as big. I am truly enjoying sorting the laundry these days.

Glowing Girls

Tiny Adorable Chicken Pot Pies

Bella decided to make a big batch of these so that she and Clara would have something interesting to take for their lunches this week (physical therapy clinic and law office, respectively).

She used our usual chicken pot pie recipe (I say usual, but with half of us off gluten for the last many months it's been a while since I made it!), but used the biscuit dough to line muffin tins. Without pre-baking them, she filled them with the creamed chicken and vegetable mixture, then popped in the oven. Amazingly, they slid right out of the pans after cooling.

Not eating gluten, I had to give these a pass, but they sure did smell good, and make the girls happy.

A Pair of Golden Birds

I love the pairs of birds I find at the thrift store--often white, but these are an actual weighty metal. Not so impressive by themselves, but grouped with other pairs they are nice.

Summertime Sister

Oh sure, Sister, this is fine for summertime. But what about winter?

Alabama Chanin A-Line Dress

I found two sets of jersey sheets at the thrift store--and with two flat sheets to work with, was able to try out the Alabama Chanin A-Line dress from Natalie Chanin's latest book.

It's very, very A-line, and though I took in the seams down to the hips, it's still a lot of garment floating around out there. It's very comfortable, but not really me. I will, however, wear it to swan around the house on occasion in the summer.

Bella's Roses, Fading

Vintage Simplicity 3552: A Collar for Embroidery

 Over Christmas break I cut this dress out for Clara, and sewed the collar pieces together in preparation for some elaborate embroidery--and Clara took over from there. It was her carrying-around handwork for spring semester, and then she made the dress.

She's pretty handy with the satin stitching.

And I was very impressed with the chevrons she achieved with the skirt pieces.

On plain old ticking.

Middlemarch, and a Cat