Good evening, friends. It's been a while. How are you? We are doing well here in the northern most part of Ohio. I have gardening and quilting on the brain, and so that's what I've been doing a lot of.
I am still working, but a little closer to home these days. Not that this has given me much more free time, I do have teenagers and small children after all. But it has made the drive home shorter and allowed me to sleep in just a little bit longer in the mornings.
I have decided to be intentional about making time to sew. Last month I returned to the local quilt guild after nearly a decade away. There are new faces, and some more familiar, but the overall feeling was very different. The same joy and love for sewing, and a new excitement for gathering in the name of quilts. But it was just different. I enjoyed it tremendously. I made new friends, and they have inspired me to sew more. Having a monthly "quilting commitment" has worked its magic. I sewed a quilt top! I must, after all, sew a little bit, if I'm going to participate in a sewing group. Tonight I hope to add borders to this.
Hopefully this image doesn't give you vertigo. I cannot seem to rotate it. (I might be too tired to try.) Memorial Day is on the way and the Fourth of July too. So red, white, and blue are my current colors. This top is very simple, made from scraps in my stash, but if you know me, you know it's all about the quilting anyhow. I'll be quilting this on my Juki TL2010q. Eventually.
And I said that I have been gardening. Oh, have I! Situated prominently in our back yard is a garden bed. The back yard feels more like our front yard because it faces the main road, where just beyond that is an expansive view of Lake Erie. When we purchased this home three years ago, the garden bed was unruly. It housed a beautiful purple iris, an overwhelming amount of ivy, a holly bush, two unknown trees, and was filled thick with lily of the valley. Each summer I thinned the lily of the valley, removed a few things more, and put in plants. This year, it feels for the first time, like a garden.
I planted another iris, this one pink, and I have one more to plant waiting patiently in the driveway. I planted lilies, creeping phlox, delphinium, daisies, echinacea, mums, and foxglove. Oh, I cannot wait to see how these plants fair!
