A Wonderful Weekend

What incredibly beautiful weather we enjoyed this past weekend for parades honoring our veterans and fallen heroes, barbecues, gardening, etc. Our family celebrates Cousin Day/Weekend at this time each year. What fun it is to see all of my young cousins playing happily together. Their ages range from seven to thirteen: four girls and three boys. I also enjoy spending time with my older cousins and their spouses, too! :-)

On Sunday after church, I headed to the cemetery to plant some flowers and then returned home and did some gardening. Yesterday, it was more shibori fun at Cannizzaro Creations in Rockland.

I finished the binding on the "Grandmother's Flower Garden English Paper Pieced" quilt last night so that I might bring it to today's meeting of the Crosstown Quilters in Weymouth for 'Show and Tell.' The pattern called "Flowers for Emma" is available at Sherri McConnell's Etsy shop. Regular blog readers will smile knowing that Emma is also the name of my mini schnauzer; trust me, she will not be curling up on this pretty quilt. :-) You may remember that I started working on this quilt while recovering from my second adventure with breast cancer last fall. I didn't feel like taking on any big projects, but I loved hand stitching each colorful hexi flower. Each flower was then hand appliqued onto the background. I truly enjoyed working on this piece and discovering the joy of hexis.  If you are a quilter, be sure to check out Sherri's blog, a Quilting Life, as I know you will enjoy it.

So, as I mentioned, this morning was a guild morning. Since the forecast was for rain this afternoon, I wanted to get out and photograph my poppies which would not hold up well in windy, wet weather. I allowed myself just ten minutes to photograph as it wouldn't be good form for the guild president to arrive late for the meeting. I grabbed my 100-300 zoom lens to shoot these images. I love the color of this mandevilla vine, not red, deeper than pink, a lovely shade for a lipstick.

It was windy but I did manage to get a few good shots.

Now, if you like well planned, tidy gardens, please pass on by as in early spring my big garden is a bit of a jumble, BUT a wonderful jumble of color, and I love it!!! After these columbine and phlox start to go to seed, I will attempt to get things in some kind of better order, but not yet.

 

 

By the way, everyone enjoyed today's speaker Betty Habish.

May you all have a colorful, interesting, fun-filled week.

Shibori Fun

Did you have a fun weekend? I sure did, and I'm afraid that I have fallen down another rabbit hole. Yes, I took a class on Shibori at Cannizzaro Creations in Rockland on Saturday, and I think that I am hooked. :-) Now in case you don't know what shibori is. . . it is the Japanese art of fabric dyeing using indigo. The class was taught by Mary and Jenn Cannizzaro shown below in front of my rack of work.

 
They have just added a wet studio which will allow them to offer classes such as this. This mother daughter team at Cannizzaro Creations also offers long arm quilting services and other quilt classes, and they do commission work. If your quilt guild is looking for a wonderful speaker, get in touch with Mary.

 Don't be afraid to try this class. Just wear your old clothes and come prepared to have fun. Jenn and Mary started by showing us the simple steps involved, and after we got the hang of it, they allowed us to play and play we did! There was a lot of creative energy in that room.

 Go to their website for contact information and to get on the waiting list for this class.

Note to self . . . it would be impossible to completely duplicate a piece, but I do know what I did for my favorite piece at the very top of this blog post. I used a slightly larger piece of fabric to start with and used some small toy flutes from the Dollar Store. I stood one straight up in each corner and accordion folded the fabric around each one using wide rubber bands to secure them. In the middle I used a small ball. I love how that piece turned out. One more note to self . . . dip each piece four times to get the deep, rich, dark color as the fabric really does look lighter after washing.

I give this class a big blue thumbs up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!