Pictures from July

 July was a beautiful and busy month. I always enjoy July, as I feel that it is filled with summer's best. Trips to the lake, picking berries, stunning sunsets, garden produce, family picnics, beautiful flowers, well as you can see I could go on forever!

We were very blessed with an abundance of berries in our garden this year. I was able to make jam from our home grown strawberries, black raspberries and rhubarb, so far. I still plan to make red raspberry jam from our garden at some point. I also had enough berries to freeze for the winter months ahead.

There is nothing quite like a pie made with fresh berries from the garden! It gives us such a good feeling to see the hard work of planting and caring for our plants come to fruition.

Although we have planted blueberries they are very slow to grow. The picture of the plant above was taken at a beautiful blueberry farm we visit each summer. Our annual trip is one of my favorite summer traditions! This year I went with my mom and sister, with her children. It was fun to see the cousins enjoy their time together and competing to see who could pick the most blueberries!

 

One evening Jemimah brought in a basket of bell peppers she picked. She likes to pick flowers from her wild flower garden and then arrange them among the vegetables. She finds great delight in surprising me with beautiful bouquets and displays of her flowers.

I am grateful to have a nice supply of peppers in my freezer for the winter ahead.

We are thrilled to finally have some ripe tomatoes. They seemed to be a little slow to ripen this year. We have a few different heirloom varieties, which is a real treat. Above is another example of Jemimah's creative expression in vegetable/flower arranging. : )

The geese have grown so fast! They are such characters and seem to find ways to amuse us nearly every day. Axel is a little aggressive with people he doesn't know and becomes very vocal at his annoyance when unknown guests arrive, like the gas delivery man yesterday! He also finds great delight in chasing our poor little dog Darla Mae and chasing Jemimah while she rides her bike. He has gone so far as to bite her bike tire. I'm glad to be on his good side, so far!

 

Jemimah spent time this summer working on her embroidery and learning how to sew on the sewing machine. After completing a couple of hand sewn projects she was ready to try her hand at using a sewing machine. She sewed a patchwork quilt for her dolls and did a great job! I was so proud of her hard work, and blessed when she won best of fair at our county fair for her quilt.

Over the summer I hand embroidered a little runner/dresser scarf. I found the stamped embroidery kit at a little quilt shop in our area; they were selling a number of vintage stamped embroidery projects for 50cents- $1. I purchased several, some appear to be from the 1950's. 

I also added a couple of new (to me) vintage apron patterns to my collection. I am hoping to find time to sew them over the next few months, and maybe add them to my shop. I really like to button back closure of each design.

I hope you are all enjoying a wonderful summer! 

"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" Romans 11:33

Patchwork Quilt

Last month I completed a pinwheel patchwork quilt that I have been working on for a very long time. I actually began work on this quilt prior to marrying Adam. I planned to make a twin quilt for my bed back home using scrap fabric from my many sewing projects. After becoming engaged I had the ambitious idea of sewing a queen sized quilt. I continued to add blocks to my collection, but never quite enough to complete the quilt.

Unfortunately the pinwheel blocks sat in my work basket untouched for a few years until recently.

 My sister found two vintage wooden twin beds along side the road one day. She refurbished one for her little one and gave me the other. It was then that I knew that my patchwork blocks had finally found their destiny! : ) I had enough blocks to sew a twin sized quilt.

This has been a special project for me. Many of the fabric used are now over 15 years old, while some are more recent. The blue and pink square above was sewn from fabric left over from two dresses I sewed for myself. The pink on white calico was a dress I sewed when I was 17. I wore it often to when we began our sewing business and sold at a local Farmers' market. The blue was left from a dress I sewed when engaged to Adam. I wore the dress while on our honeymoon.

The pretty pink rose fabric in the block above was leftover from my sisters' bridesmaid dresses.

Instead of purchasing extra wide backing fabric I decided to piece together some fabric I had on hand. I found it a little difficult to "sandwich" all three layers together. I ended up watching a video that explained how, that definitely helped! But still it was a little tricky since I didn't have a lot of space to spread out.

 I also found a neat video that explained how to attach binding. If I hadn't been in such a hurry I would have liked to have hand stitched the binding, but decided to machine stitch in order to save time. Jemimah was quite impressed with the quilting pins I purchased. She expressed her disappointment that the pins were not a permanent part of the quilt. : )

Instead of quilting my quilt, I used embroidery thread ties. I spent one weekend working away at stitching in approximately 200 ties! It was fun, and possibly my favorite step in creating this quilt.

This project has certainly been a learning experience! It is far from perfect, but with each mistake I have learned how I will do things differently next time.

 Winston also approves of the new bed and quilt. Whenever he comes into the house, and then disappears, we know that he has gone to Jemimah's room!

Adam is now hoping that I will sew a quilt for our bed. I hope to at some point. I definitely have enough scarp fabric to do so! He is always hinting that my scrap fabric collection is getting a little out of hand. I guess I have my work cut out for me... well not quite.