What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

 Hi everyone! Hope you have had a really good week. The weather here is about to turn, so the hubs and I spent part of the day outside raking the massive amount of leaves from the front lawn. This is the downside of having trees. It was good work that took my mind off a lot of things, until I had to go inside for another Zoom meeting.

 Hi all. I hope you're all doing well! First, thanks so much for all your comments, notes, and emails about my mom's death. It's been a hard couple of weeks, and I didn't have the energy to respond to everyone individually, but I do appreciate you all.

 Hi all! Long time no see. Yes, the family crisis continues. It weighs heavily on my heart, but a friend reminded me that art can be therapeutic. I've really had no interest in anything fun, but I took her advice and found a project to work on, and darned if I didn't feel better afterward. Let's take a look, shall we?

Hearts of Hope (55" x 68")

This was a sew-along pattern designed by Bonnie Hunter to show respect for the people of Ukraine. I made it in honor of my mother-in-law whose family fled the region ahead of WW2.

Hearts of Hope (border and binding detail)

If you have read my blog before, you know how much I love string piecing--so, you can believe that I enjoyed making this one.

Hearts of Hope (backing detail)

I used a lovely sunflower (the Ukrainian national flower) print for the back.

Hearts of Hope Pillow (18" x 18")

As usual, I had leftover ...

 I am making quite satisfying progress on my Harbour Village cross stitch sampler. I’ve finished 2 more rows and have started on the large village scene near to the bottom of the sampler. The first row I finished was a dark blue wave feature underneath the light houses. The next was a pulled thread with hem stitching done in white at the top of the pulled threads to give the design. The village scene is likely to take quite a while to finish. But I’m enjoying it so that’s ok.

When my eyes give out after stitching ...

 Hi everyone! How are things where you are? We had our house painted this week. It looks amazing, like a brand new place. I'll need to take some "after" pictures, but I am so thrilled with it already. The only downside was that they started super-early, like dawn, so it was quite noisy quite early. But it's done and I am sleeping in tomorrow!

 

 Hi all! Long time no see! I've been away for a conference in Atlanta, which was hot, sticky, and expensive, but so great to see people in person again. Everyone was so excited that it almost overwhelmed the presentations. Also, true fact: we shared the hotel with a comics convention, so there were people dressed up as various characters, including a full set of Power Rangers, interspersed with our very serious group. It was interesting! After the conference, the hubster and I may have made a couple of detours on the way home. It was fun!

 Hi everyone! How are you all? Thanks so much for your good wishes about my foot last week. It is doing much, much better, thanks. Turns out that if you actually sit down and put your feet up like you're supposed to, your foot gets better. Who knew?

 

 Hi everyone! Can you feel the summer winding down? I can, and I want to hang on to it with both hands so it won't go away. Unfortunately, it's so humid that it's far too slippery to hang on to, plus I have a hard time breathing the soup that is our air right now. True fact: it has been so rainy and soupy that this week there was a full-grown frog on our deck. Or maybe it was a toad. I'm no scientist, but it was weird. He just hung out there, then literally hopped ...

 Hi all! Well, just like that, it's August. You know what comes this month-- the end of summer and the beginning of school. Amazingly, this week has so far been one of the coolest parts of the summer weather-wise. How does that happen? I don't know, but I'm not sizzling, so I'm pretty happy about it.

 

The grandkids are visiting for the summer, which means I’ve been busy juggling a toddler and a bigger kid, both of whom need things to do outside.

Taking this video as inspiration, I decided to go for something we could do TODAY from start to finish and see results. [YouTube video: “Indigo Dyeing with fresh indigo leaves // 生葉で藍染”]

Our local soil is kind of garbage. It’s sandy, silty, and blows away in the wind, but we find ways to work with it.

I ordered indigo seeds from The Dogwood Dyer several months ago and lo and behold, they ...