This low-growing camellia blooms in the fall and early winter. This winter is her second winter, and she is…happy.
The other camellia I planted is on the other side of the house and blooms later in the winter. There are buds… Last year it lost most of its buds in freezing weather, even though I put a protective cover on her. This one is a taller form. Camellias can get quite big and wide.
AND, here’s another smile.
These trimmed back trees along the path I often walk are LOADED with orange berries this year. More than I remember from the past two winters I have been here. They are probably some holly form, and they are all along this path.
Can you imagine if they weren’t trimmed so drastically? They would be…glorious.
“Garnish” is set up for hand-quilting. Yes, I put the binding on as well, as that task prevents the edges from fraying and the batting from shedding. I used Dream Cotton’s thinnest weight batting for hand quilting–Request.
My “Garnish” is one of many forms of this idea given to us by Tara Faughnan in the online Blocks3 class that is happening now and will last six months, with a new block idea every month–and a new palette.
Here’s another form of this block–which I will put on a stretched canvas when it is done. The batting is already glued to the canvas.
If I were going to use this form in a quilt I think I’d separate it with narrow sashing. Otherwise the flower form would dominate.
This piece is waiting for the “brass” color to arrive in the mail–12 wt. cotton thread–for that top right “pickle.” I order this thread from Red Rock thread online as our local stores don’t carry much 12-wt. cotton thread–which I love best for hand quilting. You can the smaller “petite” spools online for a reasonable price, so I have a good collection of colors. And many thread makers produce 12-wt thread now, so if one doesn’t have the “right” color, another might.
This afternoon my DIL and I are driving out into the country to pick up our local organic turkey. I will join her family (my younger son) for our meal, and the whole family will gather at the older son’s house for dessert. All the grands will be there, along with two grandmothers, one grandfather, and a possible boyfriend.
Have a great Thanksgiving if I don’t visit with you here before Thursday.
We’ve had temps dropping into the freezing area these past two nights, so it’s been time for me to seriously undertake the outside late fall cleanup chores. The red roses have survived the cold though, so I have not had the heart to cut them back.
Here’s what rosemary does in this climate: it makes bushes. Right now it is blooming, and the bees and hummingbirds have found it. But I think I’ll cut it back some after a hard freeze.
Still no rain though. But the walking has been delightful in these clear, sunny, cold days. Of course, if I were in Maine, I wouldn’t think this weather “cold” yet. I’d just put on socks and add a sweater layer. The wind here, though, was quite biting and strong for at least one day. And the trash cans, put outside the night before the weekly trash can pickup, had their tops opened with the night wind. We are all still picking up bits of trash that littered our front lawns.
I finished the quilt top for “Under the Maple Tree,” a Rachel LaBour’s Stitched in Color blog sewalong. The perfect backing fabric finally got here–delayed due, perhaps, to the slowdown at the airports during the shutdown. It’s a Tilda fabric. Yesterday I found a fabric for the binding locally as I couldn’t find something I liked in my stash. This quilt was a lot of work, fun though that was, so I wanted the backing and binding to really “go” with this top. The leaf blocks are all from my scrap stash.
These blocks are sewn on point, and those little cute gold side pieces were a bear to get “just right.” I worried and worried during the final trimming, but it all came out well. (Thanks Rachel LaBour.)
This little no-name donation baby quilt–made as a leader/ender with my 2-inch square bin and half-square triangles cut from scraps–is done. The pattern is from Bonnie Hunter’s free selection on her blog. It’s “Patches and Pinwheels.”
The on-point squares that form caught me by surprise. I didn’t see them coming. But I love how this secondary pattern makes this quilt so much more interesting. I’m still using those 2-inch squares to make four-patch blocks as leader/enders. So there may be another donation quilt from at least the “patches” part of this quilt down the road.
I saw my first Tea Olive shrub in bloom. It’s an orange one. They also come in white. This plant comes to us from Asia.
The fragrance is just heavenly–like apricots. I just stood in front of it and…smelled. The official name is Osmanthus fragrans…with further identifications based on family species.
I’ve been obsessed with Rachel LaBour’s “Under the Maple Tree” sewalong. I’ve made a lot of progress, too.
That picture could be…brighter. I took it last night. Now I’m down to making more leaves, moving around blocks, and sewing everything together. In other words, there is a long way to go–25 or so leaves, for one thing. Boy is this one chewing up scraps. I love this 8-inch leaf block. It is so fun to make.
This as yet nameless little neutral “Stacks” quilt–a Tara Faughnan pattern from season 2 of The Color Collective years–is off the longarm, trimmed, bound, and has its binding installed. So I have night sewing once more. It’s so cute.
I’m running out of October days to also play with Tara Faughnan’s October Blocks 3 block, “Crosswalk.” Here’s where I am now. There is also a block “in progress” at my sewing machine.
The block on the right is going into that improv quilt growing on the design wall. It will be such a nice fit with those blocks.
And the other finished “Crosswalk” block is now installed on a 10-inch stretched canvas:
There are so, so, so many ways to manipulate this block idea and so many colors with which to play in this month’s palettes. My two finished blocks are made from the brighter fabrics; the in-process block uses some of the duller/softer colors.
Today is a beautiful fall day. I’ll walk, and I’ll be able to have my noon dinner on my porch.
The scrappy quilt top from Bonnie Hunter’s 2025 Leader/Ender FREE block, released in July each year, is done and will go on the longarm next. This top is the 2-inch version and finishes at 6 inches. It is 60 by 60 and will be a donation quilt, though I LOVE IT. Once I made a few of these blocks, this quilt immediately turned into a primary project. Note that there are alternate settings suggested that involve sashing–and that Bonnie used only two color families that alternate for the diagonal rows. So, lots of room for differences in this project, including not making it scrappy at all.
Leader/Ender projects are meant to be…slow…with block pieces to be sewn instead of sewing on a little scrap between the sewing on your primary quilt project…or instead of breaking your thread. I’m addicted to this block and will next make another gift quilt with the 8-inch finished version. It is already started, LOL.
Here’s a link to to Bonnie’s “Four Patch Fun” leader ender project. ***Pay attention to how to feed the block parts through your machine so that you can “swirl” the joins in your units AND so that ALL the seams butt up to each other. Bonnie’s patterns always contain tons of “how to” pictures and other information.
The third and last of my quilt series using the large and small Cat’s Cradle rulers and this fabric palette is off the longarm, trimmed, bound, and is now my nightly tv watching and hand sewing project. These three quilts are so handsome.
Taking the place of “Four Patch Fun” is “Stacks.” This Tara Faughnan pattern and design dates to her first “The Color Collective” year (2019 I think). I made a big one for a wedding gift, but had a lot of cut pieces and a lot of fabric leftovers. I put them all in a big bag when I moved to South Carolina from coastal Maine. I still like this quilt a lot. Since this picture, I added two more rows to the length. So it will measure 63 by 67.5. ***This block would lend itself to prints. Of course it would. And I’m wondering about making the main part of the block in neutrals, as I have a lot of those in my stash still. I will try that idea soon maybe as it could be a good leader/ender project.
Believe it or not, my stash fabrics are diminishing in places, but there is still a long way to go. And occasionally I do buy fabric for backs and sometimes will buy for specific colors or patterns that I need. Some of my stash colors are now…limited.
One of our local quilt shops is switching from Kona solids to Northcott–and they put their remaining Kona on sale at 30% off. So as I was there, I did get some of the sale brights to add to the Log Cabin on the design wall. (But, let’s just say I also have alot of colors in the solids now.)
Northcott is fine. It has about the same density as Kona. But it does not have as big a color selection. I am sick about this store change (done as Kona has had some recent supply problems), but I will now be getting my Kona online. This local store was the only one with a big Kona solids selection.
Here’s a pic of the hibiscus plant I’m fighting the Mealy worms to save. That situation is better but not yet cured. It required daily attention. The front porch plant had to be dug up and thrown out. It had a big ant bed nearby, and though I have poisoned it with pellets twice, the damage was done. Ants “farm” mealy bugs for their sugary “honeydew secretions.”
The ants: the escapees just move to a new spot and are a real problem here. These ants can produce a HUGE ant hill in what seems like overnight. And if they bite your bare feet when you don’t see a hill that has emerged overnight, the pain is intense. Maybe with my Histamine Intolerance issue, their chemicals are stronger. Maybe this pain is why these ants are called “fire” ants, if that is what they are. In my case, it takes both lavender and Purification essential oils to stop the pain. and I have little blisters for days afterwards.
I am now savoring the last Jan Karon book in her 14-book Mitford series.
I will truly miss these characters. Mitford is likely meant to be somewhere in the North Carolina mountain area–and maybe is meant to be a smaller town, but something like Asheville, NC.
We have a hurricane that is now a category 5 moving toward our coast named Erin. Projections are for it to NOT hit the coast, but it is huge and the wave action will be intense.
I’m hoping that he models will be correct and it will stay out to sea.
Yesterday we had what I call a “gully washer” thunderstorm. The rain gauge said almost 4 inches in about 2 hours. The front ponds are now full again, and the fountains are working again.
Have a great week everyone! Find joy in the small moments of your lives and pause to drink them inside fully. This morning when I checked the rain gauge outside, I could her a bee buzzing on the roses, the locusts singing, the frogs calling after yesterday’s rain, the crows talking to each other, a slight coastal breeze moving the spectacular clouds–all a moment celebrating summer so I paused to let it all happen.
And on a new prennial in the new front garden by the porch?
It’s Mealybugs.
Here’s a pic of what they look like that I found online. I sprayed the tops of the infected plants with 50% alcohol and water, but it didn’t get the underside of the leaves on the plant outside–and we’ve had a fair amount of rain that will wash off the alcohol too.
Ugh! I’ve got the Hibiscus on the porch mostly under control. But not the front area plant that is NOT on a porch. So more spray this morning to include trying to get at the areas under the leaves.
Mealybugs, says the video below, can really be a plague in greenhouses.
And here’s more info on the Mealybug life cycle, if you are interested. There is a fly form involved too.
The third and my last quilt top in this current series exploring how blocks from the small and large Cat’s Cradle rulers might work together is done and folded up on the design wall while it waits its turn on the longarm. There is now, too, a purchased backing that is…”wild.”
I used the same fabric palette for these three quilts. The middle quilt, “Spring’s Song” is on the longarm now.
The first quilt that started this journey, “Fall’s Splendor,” is getting its binding sewn down.
And I will confess, I had another idea of a way to combine these blocks but if I go forth with it, I will use different fabrics.
Bonnie Hunter has released this year’s leader/ender project–“Four Patch Fun.” She starts a new leader/ender project on July 1st every year. One is meant to just sew one of these block components in the place of breaking thread on a primary project. Or, to sew one of these components instead of using a fabric scrap to keep sewing without breaking one’s thread.
I have fallen in love with this 6 1/2 inch block that uses 2-inch strips. (She included measurements for 2 1/2 inch strips for an 8-inch block as well.). These block components are easy to cut and easy to sew. Here is what I have done so far, and I can tell you that these blocks are addictive to make all on their own. No way will this one stay in the leader/ender category long for me, LOL. Nevermind how they look together on my design wall as I’m sure there will be a lot of moving blocks around.
Bonnie included, as she always does, a lot of “how to” in her directions AND numerous ways to set these blocks. I like the way the blocks form diagonal braids, but one could also group 4 blocks to make a circle pattern, with the light cross in the middle, and to maybe separate those blocks with narrow sashing and cornerstones. I have no idea where my blocks will go, but I’m…addicted to making them. For sure.
One project that has been ongoing as a leader/ender project for me is making a dozen placemats from the bin of 2-inch squares. I had a lot of fun devising various patterns using color, but also just making scrappy blocks. I had enough leftover fabric in one print to back the whole dozen. And enough of that fabric to make some bindings too, though not bias binding which I prefer. The rest of the bindings will be made from leftover bias binding strips I’ve saved along the way.
BUT, another goal with this project is to figure out how to install binding on BOTH sides with my sewing machine. I have been lousy at that task. Yet many quilters here that I know do this work beautifully. I tried with the placemat you see on the top. It was…terrible. I had to take the whole binding off and start again and to sew down the binding by hand.
I’ve watched some videos now and have some new ideas–especially with how to handle the corners. And I’ve ordered a Janome foot called a “left bi-level foot” that let’s the needle lie right on the binding edge while the right side of the foot is higher to accommodate the binding thickness. (There is also a “high bi-level” foot available for other projects that have two levels of thickness involved.)
Wish me luck as I’ll try one idea for sewing down the binding later today.
I went through all my saved solid strips and culled the really narrow ones–and pulled out all the bright colors. I’m making log-cabin blocks (14.5 inches unfinished) with these strips. To what end, I don’t know yet.
There is one lone one on the design wall, with the second to follow later today. The wonky strip below is as yet not exciting me… Maybe I’ll try one more. Maybe not.
I think, next, I’ll pull out one of the projects from The Color Collective where I had a lot of leftovers already cut and a stash of those fabrics saved. That project would make a good donation quilt at the very least and would move that fabric along nicely.
I’ve apparently been AWOL. But I’ve been…summering. And, yes, always, sewing.
First, look at my beautiful Crepe Myrtle tree. It just bloomed, and it’s growing and filling out now. It seems so happy.
On the gardent front, the grass is thriving from the rain brought by the thunderstorms we’ve had, and the Japanese Beetles are slowing way down for this year. I think I picked a thousand off of my roses and adjacent plants like the now-blooming Vitex (a drought resistent Mediterranean plant).
Second, my 16-year-old (almost 17) granddaughter starts TODAY sailing across the Atlantic to Spain from the British Virgin Islands in a 2-mast wooden boat–after a week of preparation and sailing refresher days that also included scuba diving in the BVI islands.
This young woman LOVES sailing, and this trip meets educational requirements that will serve her well if she pursues this interest as crossing the Atlantic in a sailboat opens all sorts of doors. The boat is the ARGO, and we can track the route online at seamester.com, which many family members and friends are doing. The “first stop” across the Atlantic is the Azores, which will be reached after 18 or 19 nonstop days. The students and crew will sail the boat, night and day. There is no “parking” this boat. The students will have harnesses on at all times (whew!) and have come equipped with all the necessary foul weather and foot gear.
Here’s the Argo at rest in the BVIs:
What an adventure! I am of course glued to the online interactive map of the Argo’s progress, reading the daily blogs, and looking at all the pictures. The students will rarely have access to their phones until they reach the Azores and, later, when they get to Gibraltar and then go on to the Spanish coast.
Three, “Dancing Kites” is now finished. It is a baby quilt for an upcoming little girl, arriving sometime in July.
I used a 5-inch Kites ruler, and I will be using it again. There are so many blocks one can make with a kites ruler–and they come in many sizes. The fabrics all came from my stash–but I did buy a backing fabric. I quilted with a pale pink thread, using the “Folk Hearts” pantograph (Urban Elementz: Beany Girl Quilts / Benay Derr).
For this quilt I wanted lots of kite movement, so I contrasted the groupings/rows of 4 kites of the same color with up/down “sashings” of single kites in downward rows of 4 kites and sideways rows separating the 4-kite groupings. Truly, these kites ARE dancing.
I am in total love with this Tilda backing fabric:
Could it be more fun or more perfect for this quilt?
I finished reading a book gifted to me by a long-time friend when she discovered my favorite book in the whole world is Gene Stratton-Porter’s LADDIE–a book my mother read to me an my sisters more than once.
I enjoyed every minute of reading THE KEEPER OF THE BEES which my friend sent to me. This novel was Stratton-Porter’s last novel–written before her automobile was hit by a trolley in Los Angeles in 1924, where she was working in the film industry due to the success of her writing.
My friend and I were born in 1944 and 1945 during WW2, which was only a little over 20 years from Stratton-Porter’s 1924 publishing of THE KEEPER OF THE BEES. Her novel LADDIE was among her earlier books.
My friend and I were Air Force “brats” who lived in military communities that had strong ties to the world Stratton-Porter details in her novels. It was an era of patriotism, belief in God, strong families, sacrificies made for “doing the right thing,” honesty, truth, character, sturdy educations in the classics and reading, and so on. Her protagonists have very strong connections to nature, and she writes in a time when there are a lot of small communities where people are strongly connected to each other. In Stratton-Porter’s novels, bad men and women fail dramatically. And shame does not just affect a person who didn’t “do the right thing”; shame falls too on those nearby–on families, communities, the innocent, and so on.
I miss much about that world, that country.
My son and DIL gave me a camellia and a Texas Sage plant for my birthday this year. Both are planted now and are thriving. I went out to water the Texas Sage and its adjacent plants the other day, and it was COVERED with pink flowers!
I had some help digging out the liriope plants in this bed–planted before I bought this house. This bed gets direct, really hot morning sun, and the liriope was so not happy there. While at the nursery with DIL Corinne, I also got a phlox (Intensia) and a Veronica that hopefully will take the heat in this bed. The white pipe is the discharge pipe for my water filtration system. These plants will spread and fill up this space.
I am still playing with the Cat’s Cradle rulers. I wanted to see if the 4-inch and 8-inch blocks would play nice with each other.
They do. These 4 rows are sewn together and make a big block that will be 1/4th of a quilt top that will meaure 64 by 64, like the first top. Butting up the seams between the blocks has been an issue and I’m exploring whether or not I can press differently when sewing the block parts together. Can all those seams be pressed open?
The second block is now organized, and I’ll sew it together later today and connect it to the first block. (On the left is the finished first top and its backing, waiting for the longarm.). Then it will be on to the other side and its two blocks.
One grandson is now home from his travels (Thailand). The other one landed in Laos yesterday and will be in Asia for the rest of June. My granddaughter leaves on her sail in a wooden boat to Spain this next weekend. Everyone else has their feet on American soil, LOL.
The Japanese beetles seem to be slowing down now. I have picked at least a thousand off my roses and nearby plants. Next spring I’ll put down something around the roses that the Japanese beetle grubs will hopefully eat–Bacillus Thuringiensis, which is a naturally occurring soil bacterium that is toxic to some insect larvae, but not to humans or mammals in general.
The weather is beautiful, though we have storms coming through again. We always already need rain here in the tropics. My grass got fertilized and is thriving. It is so pretty this year.
And now it is time for my main meal on the back porch, where I will start the next book in Jan Karon’s Mitford series: HOME TO HOLLY SPRINGS. I’m baking some cod and stir frying some spinach in butter with some garlic. The seedless watermelon has already been cut up, and my pears on the counter are almost ripe. There will be no starch today as I have picked up two pounds–from all the summer fruit of course.
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.
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.
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