New sewing club project

Hello, everyone. Today's post is of last month's sewing club project. It was a thread catcher and pincushion.

This is more elaborate than some of them are. There is a bit of boning in the top of the basket as well as some interfacing in the bag. there is a removable pincushion on the top and it sits on a weight to keep things from falling on the floor. Our club president made an example before the meeting and she put some of her little Clover type clips on the petals of the daisy. All in all, very nice and very useful. The fabrics were all quilting cottons from stash. The little flange was also in stash, and I was happily surprised by how nicely the whole thing came together. If y'all are learning to sew, or quilt, it would be a great idea to get together with other folks who are also into the hobby. There is always something more to learn!

Delicious Spanish Food

Hello, everyone. It's hot season already in South Texas. My DH was wandering the internet looking for something to prepare for supper that wouldn't be hot. He checked in with the fascinating food blog of Mr. Bevin, Spain on a Fork, and discovered a seasonal salad from Madrid. It was named in honor of San Isidro (Labrador, I think) and is very flavorful and very nutritious.

The lettuce, the tomatoes, the hard cooked egg, the tuna and olives, combined with a garlicky vinaigrette...I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I think it was called Ensalada de San Isidro but am not sure. I encourage y'all to search out Spainonafork.com and try it for yourselves!

Beautiful flowers in May

Hello, everyone. It's early summer in South Texas, but the flowers haven't given up yet. I took some pictures to share with y'all.

A little project completed

Hello, everyone. This little bag began as a test sew-out of the design on the embroidered felt pouch that was posted a while back. It sat there, looking unfulfilled, until I decided to make it into a pouch. The pouch has a zipper and is lined. I used part of a 10 inch Layer Cake type fabric set to make the lining. A couple of random charms (5 inch squares) became an interior pocket. Just before the final seam, I looked at it and thought how it seemed to need just a bit of texture. The stash includes, as y'all have already observed, beads. I pulled a hank of Czech seed beads in cheery opaque yellow out and embroidered a row of beads along the edge of the large flower petals in the design. Perfect!

Strange beetle in the yard

 Hello, everyone. 

I will post a photo of the strangest insect. It was very interested in the dill flower umbels, but I couldn't see any sign that it was either eating the little flowers or pollinating them.

Does anyone out there recognize it?

Wildflowers this spring

 Hello, everyone.  

This spring,  between the planted flowers,  the flowers that came up and were moved, and the flowers that just appeared,  we're really enjoying the view in the yard.

The first picture is a cactus pot we have had for years. Now that it's blooming,  every time I stop to look at it,  the little leaf bee pops up from deliriously rolling around in the pollen. I think she's afraid something will happen to the wonderful heaps of baby-bee food.

This cactus is sensitive to rot, so I have never taken it out of the pot it's been happy in all of these years. 

This next photo is a tiny thing that pops up in the grass every spring. I think the blossom is only about 1/4" across. 

I have no idea what it's name is. It's just simply pretty.

This flower, which is a little bluer than the photo comes out, is amazingly popular with the Monarch types of butterflies. It's a native, but it does need to be watered in my yard. I have it growing in a large pot and it's very happy there.

Yesterday for the first time I saw it being visited by a monarch variety butterfly.  

We're trying to be hospitable to the native pollinators, not only because they're pretty but also when food plants in the yard bloom, we hope the pollinators will find them and pollinate the blooms. Especially on the avocado tree!

A more complete look at the Four Generations quilt

 Hello, everyone. The other day I put up a photo of the quilt folded up on a rack.

Then yesterday I unfolded it onto a bed so the totality could be seen.

The large butterfly blocks were begun by DH's DGM, and work was in progress when she passed away, over 50 years ago. Some decades after that, my dear MIL found the box of squares and patterns and resumed work on it. 

One day a package arrived in the mail, with the twelve large squares inside.

The small, needle turned applique butterflies on the edge, the sashing, and the borders were added by me. And during the (failed) first quilting phase, hand stitching on a frame, DD1 took some stitches as well. Thus "four generations" participated. DD2 was too young to stitch at that time but she remembers the frame in the living room. 

Hand quilting didn't mesh with the rest of our busy life, so the quilt was put away for a while. Then last year we brought it back out and I machine quilted the rest. The scrap style binding was finished about a week ago.

Whew! 

I did add a sleeve for hanging, too! Now to find the right hanging place and put it up.

Another bowl filler

 Hello, everyone. 

I have finished another bowl filler from this lovely book my DM gave me, which is shown below.

The back side, the top photo, with decorative quilting stitches. 

The front side, at  right, with some decorative stitches and a small scattering of beads. This project was done out of stash--in fact, the center striped section was an off cut from the last little bowl filler. That explains the very similar set of colors here!

(I haven't figured out how to slide the pictures around on the post while posting from the phone. Select and slide with a finger isn't doing it, don't know why.)

Here is the front cover of the book. It's paperback and has a lot of photos of the projects to go with the text and line drawings. 

This is the project photo page that has the two I've done so far. (Top left was the first one, and the bottom one was the second.) The low-volume colors I used make mine look totally different. 

This is a cute collection of ideas for fabric scraps.