This is a picture of what is called a “Gem” magnolia. It stays small and is ideal for planting in subdivisions where one of the big magnolias–which grow very tall and have spreading, big, lovely crowns–would overwhelm small yards. Note that Magnolia blossoms are very fragrant too.
On a big regular magnolia, the blossoms would be bigger. But look at this pretty bloom, which is surrounded by more buds.
This tree of my back neighbor’s was planted 2 years ago, and it is loaded with blooms this year.
Seeing blooming magnolia trees reminds me of way back in the day–I was in high school–when I was maid of honor for a treasured first cousin’s wedding in rural Virginia. I flew from Omana, Nebraska, and was met at Dulles airport in northern Virginia (just west of DC) by the bride’s father, who flew me to their home in Lovingston, Virginia, (near Charlottesville and Lynchburg to the south).
My cousin carried a single magnolia blossom in the wedding that took place in a beautiful and old rural Episcopal church.
This past winter I worked on making a series of quilts using Latifah Saafir’s Hurty ruler (which makes half-rectangle triangle blocks sized 12 inches down to 1 inch). My goal was to use materials from my stash, with the exception perhaps of some backings if warranted. I do like plain backings for busy quilts.
Each of these quilts has its own blog post entry. But I thought it might be nice to see them in one place–to see the design progression I made–in the order of making.
In “Arrowheads” I wanted to play with the design that gets created when the left or right angle cuts in the half-triangle meet and form an “arrowhead” triangle shape. See the upper right corner for an “arrowhead” triangle. I organized the blocks to make that fat triangle on a diagonal line from top right to bottom left. In places, these “arrowhead” triangle are more subtle than others.
In “Diamonds” I wanted to play with the long triangle that forms when you combine 4 of these half-rectangle blocks. In places I made diamonds, yes, but I didn’t want a quilt of all diamonds. So away from the center of the quilt, I often just used the half of a full diamond block. I also made some diamonds and long triangles in much lighter fabrics, to vary the rhythm.
In “Dancing Hourglass Diamonds” I used the “hourglass” rectangle triangle block I discovered in this year’s Tara Faughnan’s online Blocks 2 class. Once the rectangle triangle block is made, one cuts block on the diagonal and combines the parts with OTHER cuts. Note that you have to have all left or all right cuts on the Hurty ruler for these diagonal cut pieces to line up.
I made some solid little diamonds to pull the eye around the quilt, but take a moment to gaze at the quilt to see what happens–magical bigger diamonds form to join the dance around this quilt.
I was thinking of a red or green border and found this blue leftover in my stash–from a wideback used in another quilt. The minute I laid it next to the quilt top, the quilt started singing. Out loud. Insistent. Who knew?
In “Gradations” I played with the range of sizes available in the Hurty Ruler. I chose sizes that would add up to creating a downward row of 48 inches–in order to make a center with the darker color in this block oriented to the bottom on its side. This center sat on the design wall for several months until I ordered the fabric used in the border triangles and on the back.
A nunber of people have asked me for the name of this fabric: It’s “Pixie Petals in Sapphire,” made by Coming up Roses for Moda (fabric 39788/13).
There may be one more in this series one of these days as I just realized that by mainpulating color, you can make a straight line with this block.
I thought it might be nice to give you an update on the bee issue in this tree.
DIL Tami Enright is the co-founder and Director of THE BEE CAUSE. (There is a good online site to that group.) So that’s where I went for information. Tami sent me to a local beekeeper for guidance, after noting that perhaps a beekeeper could use available hormones to encourage these bees to move.
BUT, the beekeeper noted that while that strategy might work, the tree is likely FULL of honey–in a place that is virtually impossible to reach–so other bees would find this site and move into the tree.
So there are two options left to manage this situation.
One is to have a beekeeper, who is dressed for protection, cover the entrance permanently with a mesh that prevents the bees from entering or leaving that space. Yes, the colony would die, but no other colony could get established in that tree.
The other is to just leave the colony alone. And that action will depend on the wishes of the two adjacent homeowners (one of whom are new owners and have not moved in yet) and our HOA. The tree is in the middle of the two houses and likely on HOA-owned land.
The sidewalk is not far away, so other neighbors and neighborhood walkers are afraid of the bees. Note that bees don’t really attack unless someone gets right up close to their nest. I don’t know how close the mowing happens… Or if a curious child might wander too near the bees. So I don’t want to totally discount these fears.
I also don’t know if perhaps that big Live Oak is now hollow and poses a risk. Live Oaks are highly prized here–they are so emblematic of this coastal area, with their huge spreading moss-draped crowns. BUT, my family just this past week had to cut one of these trees as it was hollow and was no longer safe. Inside at the bottom was a racoon nest full of babies!!!
Yes, the babies were relocated gently to a pine-straw nest made in nearby woods, and the mother retrieved them as soon as things quieted down in the area.
Rachel Hauser of the Stitched in Color blog is starting a new online sewalong, starting May 11th. Rachel is predominately a scrappy quilter, and I love her work. You may recall I did her “Scrap Cabin” quiltalong some months back–as I fell in love with her border for that quilt.
Well…
Her new sewalong features her quilt “Parsnips”–which has a sashing treatment with which I also fell in love. Her green sashing color is much more intense than I could get my camera to capture from the front of her downloaded pattern.
Rachel used rectangles, but I have a bin that has a ton of 2.5-inch squares, so I’m going to use squares.
And I was guessing the size of her sashings before she released her pattern, so mine are just a bit bigger. I’m using my “Tri Rec” rulers to make my triangle sashing blocks, but Rachel has included templates in her pattern.
I’m sewing together my squares as a leader/ender project for right now. And I’m adding an outer neutral border so I can have the whole of these cute stars along the edges. My block of squares measures 16 inches and I’m sewing it in 4 pieces. I don’t know yet how big I’ll make this quilt.
Clearly I’ve never met a ruler I didn’t like. I recently saw an involved quilt that used the kite block, and I was so intrigued that I ordered the recommended 5-inch version.
In the process of trying out the ruler–it’s awesome–I seem to have started a quilt using a kite block. I’ve drawn a plan now and am cutting out more sets of 4 blocks.
I really like the movement in this arrangement and will use the single rows as if they are sashings. I already see where I want to move that light blue single row–I think it needs to be a block on its own and there need to be more blocks with light kites and stronger outside pieces. And that’s how my quilting goes…
The 4-inch Cat’s Cradle quilt top is done, ironed, and pinned to the design wall while it waits for its backing and for its turn on the longarm–which gave me the design wall room to play with Parsnip and the kites.
This quilt needs a name. Right now, I have no idea…
And I will say I’m not done at all with playing with these Cat’s Cradle rulers. There are so many different settings in the “Cat’itude” little book by Deb Heatherly.
This week is flying by so fast…
Now I need to stop and get “Big Slice” done and off the longarm. But that means I need to stop playing, which is always so hard for me to do.
My neighbor brought me flowers for my birthday back in March. The beautiful, heavy vase was one of hers, and I thought one that should be returned to her. So on my next trip to the grocery store after these flowers were spent, I brought flowers for her, put them in the vase, and returned all to her.
Some weeks later, she returned the vase to me, chuckling, and said, “well, it looks like we’ll be passing this vase back and forth now.”
Around Easter, I had the vase full of flowers as two of my nieces visited and also brought flowers. My neighbor appeared with a handful of flowers Easter Sunday morning–three of these amazing orange roses with dramatic green centers and a spray or two of tiny white roses–and put them into the vase alongside the flowers already there. These large roses are so, so fragrant. I could even smell them with my bad nose.
I took a picture of the roses and showed it to my DIL later that day, and a friend of hers found out what they are:
Meanwhile, the geranium on my screened porch wintered over and is now FULL of blooms. It loves this cooler spring weather. (I did bring it in for a few days during the worst of the ice and snow last winter.) And it actually managed low 30’s temps just fine.
This quilt is made with the 8-inch Cat’s Cradle ruler–the bigger ruler than the first original one, which stops at 4-inch blocks. Each use of either ruler produces TWO blocks, so you can vary the square color if you like. Or, if you are reversing light and dark, you could also vary what are the light triangles here. This quilt measures 64 inches square. And, of course it used a lot of my scrap stash.
Isn’t the red striped border perfect? I think so. The whole project is just so…cheerful. I’ve had this Blue Jay fabric for some time in my stash. I used it on the back of another quilt years ago. And I had enough left to use it on this quilt.
This quilt is a donation to our Charleston, SC, Tunnels to Towers project that will house 90 homeless vets. I so hope that the person who chooses this quilt (they will be able to choose) does so because it will brighten his/her day just by looking at it.
I will make another version of this quilt again–meant to be a donation quilt likely and to have a nice leader/ender project in the making. It’s easy, fun to make, is scrappy, and uses a lot of stash fabric.
PS: the 4-inch Cat’s Cradle top needs only its bottom 4 rows sewn now. YEAH!
Here it is with the blocks unsewn, except for some of the center blocks.
I’m sewing these blocks into rows and sewing rows together.
This quilt feels like a monster project right now, LOL. But, slowly and surely. And I do love it! It is so colorful and interesting. Boy has it eaten up stash fabric.
“Big Slice” is on the longarm with one pass done–and is waiting for me to finish her and put on her binding (which is cut).
I’m still drawn to the “prickly” version of this block–I made one and posted about it when I turned it into a stretched canvas piece.
Tara Faughnan made a quilt with the “Big Slice” block that is very engaging and interesting. You can see that on her Instagram or on her newsletter page. I hesitate to reproduce it here as that probably isn’t legal.
Meanwhile, I’ve been distracting myself by playing with two other projects as kind of “leader/ender” projects.
“Gradations” is the 4th and final quilt in my half-rectangle triangle series, using Latifah Saafir’s Hurty Ruler. I am so happy with this quilt. It was so fun to make. The center sat on the design wall for some time until I saw the fabric I used in the outer border. Then, poof, I was off and running.
I used that fabric for the backing and binding–and cut it so that the strips ran sideways rather than up and down.
I made another block to go on stretched canvas. This block is from Tara Faughnan’s Blocks 2 class and was one of the choices for her Big Slice wedding ring block–which you can see further down in the quilt top I made.
These blocks are kind of hung “willy nilly” but they also work just fine in my sewing quilt room. They all make me smile. The middle piece is a quilt and is not on stretched canvas.
My 4-inch Cat’s Cradle ruler quilt top is coming along. I can see the end. I like making this block a lot, so there’s no pain involved here. Each block makes TWO blocks.
“Tunnels to Towers,” my donation quilt is off the longarm and has had its binding installed. This is the 8-inch version of the Cat’s Cradle block. It’s now downstairs getting its binding sewn down at night.
Next up on the longarm is “Big Slice.”
It’s kind of funny how lots of projects come together all at once. Funny and Fun.
It is a bit cold for us right now, but my red roses are spectacular. They curve around the porch, which I just cleaned as the deluge of pine pollen seems to be over.
The Asian jasmine vine has really taken hold. It’s not a true jasmine, but it will bloom in weeks to come. I’ve been told the blooms are very fragerant.
The white azeleas on the side of the house are so, so pretty. I transplanted them from the front of the house as it was way too hot for them in that spot.
The little yellow rose, gifted by a neighbor, is full of blooms. I put a weighted bucket over it for protection in the worst of our snow and ice last winter.
And in the front, the Drift roses have…drifted…and are now twice as big as last year when I planted them. The hollies are also thriving, and the local bees love their blooms, which will eventually turn into bright red berries.
Speaking of bees…
One of our homeowners has a huge bee hive in this dead tree trunk. They won’t bother walkers on the sidewalk, but neighbors are freaked out about their presence. There is no telling how much honey these bees have inside that trunk!!!
I don’t know whether or not our HOA will try to poisen them. My DIL just told me a man she knows who rehomes bees and saves swarms might be able to get this hive to relocate via using a pheromone bait.
I’m thinking about if I should contact this man to see what he thinks. Otherwise I’m sure poison will be used…
You’ve seen pics of this quilt off and on, I know, but I do like to do a final photo when a quilt is all completed. “Scrap Cabin” is a Rachel Hauser (Stitched in Color) design, and she held an online sewalong in January to make her second “Scrap Cabin”–this new one, meant to have more color combinations than just two. I also chose to use two color families in each of the nine blocks. I fell in love with the border she designed.
And I’m still in love with that border. I especially love how she designed the border’s corner blocks. So clever…
This quilt used up A TON of my stash strips. I even had to cut some strips out of bigger pieces of fabric in my stash to get the colors I wanted. ***If I make this quilt again, I will keep the neutral pieces very light and not use the lighter greys in my stash as the lighter neutrals look a lot more lacy. I did figure that out by the border as I had not seen the full impact of the lacy border effect until I started making it.
I kept the backing plain–and did buy that fabric. The panto is “Check and Chase” by Hermione Agee. I love the texture and the curves this panto added to this quilt. I used a parchment colored 40 weight Cotton thread (Signature).
