What's on my wall?

I feel like Flo!  She calls herself a butterfly quilter because she flits from one project to another.  However, I have noticed that she really finishes a lot of projects!!
But this week, I seem to have several different projects on the go.  I noticed this when i looked at my design wall:

 On the far left is the 1930's baby quilt, using  6 inch blocks,
In the center is the long table runner using a dark grey back ground,
and on the right is my latest start-- Some dresden string circles.  I came upon the StringThingALong blog, here,  and had to immediately start a new project!  So yes, these are from random scraps of varying widths.  I throw them into a box as they are generated.  These ones had a lot of 1930's scraps, since I did quite a few projects with those fabrics in the past few months.

 I continue to chip away at the final squares for the baby quilt,

and I've handquilted an outline around the 3 bottom ladies on the bonnet girls quilt.  This photo shows the machine quilting that I did on it first.  I totally disregarded the borders and went from one edge to the other with the straight lines.  I used a pale gray 30weight rayon, which I quite like! 
Hope that you have a happy day, whatever you decide to do!

Quilting

I am spending a little time relaxing with some hand quilting. Although I rarely do this, I love the look of it. I did mostly machine quilting straight lines along the edges of each of the borders and sashing on my bonnet ladies quilt but still needed something in the blocks too. So I'm just outlining each of the 12 ladies. Looking forward to getting this quilt finished..

Bonnet Girls progress

 I spent some time with the bonnet girls quilt.  It needed a border, so I decided on a pretty simple strip-pieced squares on point.  It is a seminole technique where you cut up strip sets and sew them together in a staggered way, like a staircase, and the extra fabric on the sides is later cut away.

 To get the pattern to go around the corner, I had to add a little strip of yellow at the top and the bottom of the central unit:

 and then I added a one-inch border of the gray, and a 4 inch border of white....

now it's all ready to baste!  and I pieced a back from some fabrics from my stash, so I don't even need to go shopping for the back... I guess that means no excuses for not basting it today (or tonight, or tomorrow...)
Actually, I do have another quilt that has it's binding ready to be hand-stitched to the back, and maybe that's what's beckoning to me now.
Hoping you are having a nice Wednesday!  It is the Wednesday link-up to see what others are working on....

Sunday Morning Reflections

Aren't weekend mornings the best time to think about all sorts of things?  things that happened over the past week, what you might want to accomplish over the next few days, gaze out the window and see what show nature is putting on today...

 My orchid is blooming like mad right now, and it even has a double bloom- like an egg with a double yolk.

I sewed a bit on my bonnet girls quilt yesterday, and pieced the center quite simply:

 I decided to use only 12 of the blocks, and so I have 3 leftover,

they are pretty too, and could be nice sewn into another project, but I'd rather stop at just making one project with these blocks.  If anyone else would like to have them, either to sew something, or just to study the way the applique was done, just leave a comment below, and send me your snail mail address in an email and I'll pass them along. 
The applique is done quite nicely, you can see some pencil outlines on the white background to show where to place the pieces, as well as on some of the lighter fabrics, I suppose to show where to turn under the cloth to sew it in place.  Sort of like a match-up puzzle.

I started a new knitting project,  (well, actually two of them)
It is going to be a cardigan for me.

 It will be a tweedy dark blue.  This picture shows how far I got with the first ball of yarn.  It is on 4.5mm needles and it is a simple stockinette stitch-- that's about as easy as you can get!
This is a photo of the goal:

from the book, "Knitting at Home, 60 Classics from Ella Rae Designs", by Leanne Prouse

 It is going to be quite a big project for me, and so I am not going to take any chances in it shrinking later, so I am using a Superwash wool!

 You can see that at the moment, the live oak trees are shedding their old leaves.  Every day Richard blows off the deck, and every day more leaves drift down, pushed off the tree by the new leaves,

 And this morning, there were several cardinals darting around,
I tried to get a photo of them but I was quite far away, and I don't have a zoom lens on my camera, so I apologize for the blurriness,
Cardinals are quite new to me, since they don't travel as far north as Saskatoon.  I had only seen them in books before, and I think they are really pretty birds.

I hope you are having a great weekend too, and storing up lots of energy for the week ahead!

Bonnet Girls

Yesterday I did a little bit of sewing,
I wanted to do a few more reference swatches for FMQ (Free Motion Quilting), 

 and so I did these four, but then my embroidery foot/FMQ foot, broke, so I had to stop.  (The metal bar just broke off!)

 However, I am getting quite a library of swatches!

I moved on to another project-- the antique Bonnet Girls.
These are a group of applique blocks that I bought one year at Houston Quilt Market.  There are 15 blocks.  They were sewn into a quilt top with plain white fabric as a checkerboard, but it was really wonky, so I took it apart and washed the blocks.

 I decided finally to just start something using them.  So first I am sewing a 3/4" border of yellow, and then a 3/4" border of light grey around each of them.  (Oh, I trimmed them all to 10 inches, since they were pretty uneven). 
As I was handling them, I appreciated all the lovely fabric combinations that were made,
I also noticed the embroideries in the little bouquets were not all done the same:

 My personal favorite, with tiny little bullion knots,
Plus, this ladies bodice and umbrella is the exact same shade as the grey I am using for the borders!

I'm not sure what I'll do with them next.... thinking of various types of pieced sashing,  maybe I'll need to do some embroidery!! Who knows...
Any ideas would be welcome.