...yes, my April turned out to be a rather busy month this year, starting with a big spring cleanup and general de-cluttering of the house; this time around, an annual Easter brunch to which we always invite a bunch of our good friends was the trigger for all this purging and de-cobwebbing activity... ( I did mean to post on Easter to wish you all a Happy Easter, but I simply ran out of time and only managed to post a couple of photos of our brunch on Instagram here -- I do hope you had a lovely Easter!) Once Easter had come and gone, I turned my attention to our garden at the lake where I spent a few days seeding, weeding, planting, and more weeding; I think I will be spending a lot more time gardening there shortly as we just might finally be getting around to building a deer fence this coming May around the garden plot I have saved for my veggies and berries (yay, fingers crossed!)... We've also been busy in our city garden this month which has been long overdue for some intensive pruning and simplifying; given that my garden at the lake requires a lot of springtime gardening and I spend all my summers at the lake now, our city garden, which I originally planted in a way that definitely requires summer maintenance, has been sadly neglected for the past few years with crazy out-of-control ivy basically taking it over. So, we've finally tackled the ivy which was bringing down our fence, pruned the shrubbery, eliminated a berry and flower plot (the plants in this deleted plot will now find a new home at the lake which I think will make them happier because it's so much sunnier there!), and just generally simplified the whole design. I'm quite pleased with how it's starting to shape up, and no longer do I groan when I look out at it or simply avoid looking at it all together; I feel like we are reclaiming back our backyard and we will once again enjoy spending time in it...
Now, as far as rose hippy stuff, I have been working on a few new things which I haven't had time to finish yet because I've been busy with some commission work... And, remember the patchwork above which I posted about back at the beginning of March and planned to make into fabric bundles to list in my Etsy shop at the beginning of April?... Well, it's the end of April and I'm finally ready to list a few in my shop! At first, I was actually thinking of calling this patchwork bundle "April Fresh", but as my April was slipping away and I hadn't even begun working on the bundles, I realized that a new name was called for...
While it took me a while to come up with a new name for the bundle, I knew pretty quickly what I would use to wrap the bundles up with... In the throes of some of my spring cleaning, I came across a batch of vintage lacy seam binding packages which I remember buying a while back all at once, simply because all the packages with their pretty-coloured binding looked so deliciously sweet all bunched together! So, I pulled some of the peachy pink out of its packaging and tried it around a bundle,...
...and then I tried some of the zingy chartreuse,...
...and did the same with the pretty turquoise and lavender binding,...
...and absolutely loved the resulting pretty and fresh springtime look! Now, as far as the bundle name, the expression "fresh as a daisy" jumped out at me and seemed wholly appropriate; so I printed out some labels,...
...et voilà, introducing the "fresh as a daisy..." patchwork fabric bundle...
Just like my previous fabric bundles, the "fresh as a daisy..." bundle is made up of 63 die-cut fabric squares, 8.5"x8.5" with no repeats, which sew up into a 56"x72" patchwork top. While I have yet to make a coverlet with the top, I hope to do so very soon and, as soon as I do, I'll post some photos of it; in the same way as I have done with my other patchwork tops, I will back it with cotton corduroy, sandwich some cotton batting between the two outer layers, and tie the whole of it together with 4 ply cotton yarn.
As you may have noticed, many of the squares are cut from lovely vintage cotton and cotton blend sheeting as well as vintage fabric yardage, both of which I've been very happily collecting over the years; this vintage fabric, which is made up of never before used and gently used cloth, has been paired with more recently acquired straight-off-the-bolt prints and solids.
Now, with so much yummy fabric to choose from, I have to admit it was very, very hard to decide on which fabric square should top the bundle... I ended up going with an absolute favourite vintage sheeting fabric of mine (isn't it just peachy?!) which I've been fortunate enough to find during my many thrift shop sprees. I know I'm not the only who has a serious crush on this fabric -- as you can see here and here, Angela from Cottage Magpie also has a thing for this particular vintage sheet which she has made very lovely use of it in her house (I love those curtains!)...
My Etsy shop is no longer empty as I have listed a few "fresh as a daisy..." patchwork bundles; there will be more coming soon as well as new pillowcases and cushions (yes, cushions!)... Thanks so much for popping by, and I do hope you have a lovely last weekend of April!...
