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...in the July 2013 issue of Romantic Homes magazine and in such good company!... Check it out here,
and here:
The last one (So Sylvie ) being that much more special for me because she is a dear blog friend of mine from my early blogging days... Way to go ladies and thank you Romantic Homes magazine!
...the woolly blanket! It may not be the time of the year for some of us to be thinking of woolly things (in fact, it may seem a bit like back-to-school items popping up in stores in July!), but given that the blanket is rather cheery and summery in its colors, think: cooler evenings cuddling by a campfire, magical nights sleeping under the stars, low-key afternoons on the porch watching a thunderstorm light up the sky and feeling the temperature drop after a heat wave... So, wool blankets in the summer... not such a bad thing, eh?!
As I mentioned in an earlier post, this blanket is part of a bedding collection I'm putting together (all much too slowly it seems!). It is made up of squares cut from wool and wool blend sweaters which I felted in the washing machine and lots of lovely pieces of wool and wool blend fabric (many of them vintage) which I've been slowly collecting over the years.
The squares are sewn together using one of the many stitches available on my Pfaff expression 2046 sewing machine, resulting in seams which are non-fraying and, what I think, have a very neat finish.
In fact, I don't know which side of the blanket I prefer to look at: the back side or the front side!
Once the squares are all sewn together, the patchwork is bound by a pretty cotton calico which I always seem to pull out these days because it seems to work with everything!
I think the end effect is of a happy jumble, a sweet twist on the traditional wool blanket often found in more sombre colors... What do you think?
I've also been working on some new crochet-trimmed pillowcase styles which will work nicely with my little bedding collection as well as simply on their own. I thought I'd be able to post some sneak preview photos of these pillowcases, but I just haven't had time to sort through them yet; so all I have for you is more blankie shots!...
June is turning out to be a jam-packed month for me; between it being the end of the school year (with 3 of 4 of our kids stressing out over final exams!) as well as the end of most of our after-school activities, having to get ready for our summer plans, dealing with reno and more reno and a few other things that have landed on my lap (I'll tell you about them in future posts...), I feel at times like I'm barely keeping my head above water... (There have been moments this month when I've definitely wanted to hide in bed and pull a blanket - and why not a woolly patchwork one - over my head!) I will try to be back soon with a sneak preview of my new pillowcases, especially since I've been receiving a fair amount of emails lately asking me when I will be re-stocking my shop. In the meantime, I hope your are finding time to relish all that the beautiful month of June has to offer (especially those longer days for us folk in the northern half of the world!) and thank you so much for popping by!
...where I spent part of last weekend and where, as you can see, everything is growing rather nicely! I love this hill garden because, as most of it has been started by a sprinkling of all sorts of different flower seeds in a very random way, it's always surprising me; as you can see, the lupin seeds have taken very well, fittingly so, as I harvested them from a nearby meadow. I am in love with these lupins... Aren't they real stunners!
Very happily, foxgloves have also made my garden their home, self-seeding themselves willy-nilly all over the place...
in all sorts of crooks and crannies...
not at all detered by lack of soil...
or rocks and boulders!...
I don't know who's happier with this burgeoning garden, the bees or me?!...
Now on the construction front, we've started a new project: a shed built right on the dock...
As we have quite a steep climb between the dock and the house which is perched high up overlooking our bay (you can see what it looks like here), we thought it a good idea to build a shed by the water to store all our boating and swimming supplies (of which we seem to get more of all the time!). Since there is almost no flat area by the water, we decided to extend the dock to make room for the shed.
However, because of its sweet location, it's slowly becoming more of a sleeping hut for the kids than a storage shed; there are plans afoot now to outfit it with some foldup bunk beds! And, why not, with this view to look at in the morning!
In the next few days, I will post about my finished blanket as promised... I just felt like sharing these few snapshots with you right away because they make me so happy thinking that summertime is here again. 'Hope you enjoyed them and thanks for the visit!
