A new moth in our yard

Hello, everyone.

As y'all know, we wanderers appreciate a lot of facets of nature. Today we saw a moth we had never seen before. Never heard of it either. But there they were: Rothschildia forbesi, known in Spanish as Quatro Espejos, the Four Mirrors. It's a wild silk moth native to South Texas and points south.

There are two of them here. They seem to have just crawled out of their cocoons. Aren't they beautiful!

Finished a UFO!

 Hello, everyone.

There is a UFO (UnFinished Objects) box in my sewing room. I pulled out something that was at least 80% done yesterday, after finishing the little oblong pouch, and now it is done too. I feel so liberated!

This is from the Sweet Pea online catalog: 

As y'all can see, the Spring table runner was made a while back. Today, after quilting the edges of the blocks and adding an "American Beauty Rose" print fabric binding, the Summer one is also done. It had only been sitting around for at least a year--the first letter was done in an embroidery class at the A Block Away quilt shop. 

I like the instructions that Sweet Pea includes with their patterns, they're clear and have pictures to help with anything confusing. I don't have to open the file in my embroidery software and "watch" it stitch out on screen to try and guess when to put a piece of applique fabric under the needle, and they also tell a good size--even a generous size--to cut the applique pieces out. I'm not likely to start stitching something with too-tiny fabric bits that way.

The one thing I differ with them a little is that I prefer not to trim the batting close on each of these rectangles until the applique is done. It seems to me that my machine doesn't quite stitch as straight going around the rectangle on the first fabric tack down if the batting isn't equally tall on both sides of the previous (batting tack down) line of stitching. It's not like leaving the excess batting there will cause problems, at the end of making each rectangle it comes out of the hoop anyway and that's a good time to trim extra batting away.

Another little something

Hello, everyone.  

I have been experimenting with crumb piecing lately. There have been quite a lot of odd bits and ends, that weren't so small as to make me think of pincushions or bowl fillers. Besides, I have a bowlful of them already.

This is a pouch made from the "blue tones" pieced fabric. It incorporates the spring colored scraps left from the most recent Charm Pack Apron, plus a lot of other bits.

There is a zip closure and a strap across the end that the closed zipper pull will rest at. The boxed corners make the zipper end be horizontal when held by the little strap.

I am thinking that this can either hold snacks while we are walking the Camino, or be stuffed with a tee shirt for use as a pillow on the plane. 

It should be gently washable, as the pieced fabric is backed with a sheet of Shape flex light interfacing. I will drip dry it after washing, just like the hiking socks and merino garments. 

Happy birdies

Hello, everyone. 

We lucked into some stale bread about a week ago, and have been doling the crumbs out to the birdies. 

Here we see several white winged doves and some mourning doves and a couple of house sparrows, all eating bread crumbs that fell from the bird feeder. It turns out that doves are more likely to come for bread than for songbird mix from the store.

Due to the recent rains and the weather getting warm, we also have a lot of flowers blooming. 

The top 2 are cannas. Then there is a daylily that was broughtover from the old house. The bottomones are new to me. They are open in the morning only.

A proof of concept pouch

Hello, everyone.  As y'all may have noticed,  I hate waste. Particularly waste of fabric.

While working on the little rosary pouch recently,  a couple of extra things were made and not used. They were about 4 to 5 inches square, polyester satin, and quilted. I couldn't just toss them.

Today they became a proof of concept for some little gifts.

The quilted outer surface of the pouch is those same bits that didn't work out for the rosary pouch. Zipper is from stash. There is a lightweight polyester lining that doesn't show. And there are a few of the many, many buttons in the stash. (The penguin is a novelty button.) I don't think this one is really nice enough to give someone,  but the button decorations and the idea of the little pouch look like a keeper.

I did use different embroidery threads to sew the buttons on, as y'all can see. I think we can call this Christmas preparations for next year. :-)

First tomato!

Hello, everyone.  Today I picked our first tomato of the year! It's an early tomato, so it's only about 2 inches across (about 5 cm) and it's red all over. So it came inside to be enjoyed. 

The little green  things are onion thinning.

On the training front, today we walked about 6 miles at Bentsen State Park and served a banquet to the mosquitoes. Well, we had applied repellent but on the part of the trail near the River, it didn't keep up. Still, we had a pleasant walk in the early afternoon. Temps were in the low 80s F. We expect that when we walk from Sevilla things will be similar.

Easter greeting to all

Hello, everyone.  It's a little late, for Latin Easter, and a little early for Eastern Easter. But I'm going to send out Easter greetings to all today.

This was part of the Easter decorations in my local parish this year. I was delighted by the candles and the butterflies. Kudos to the folks who worked hard on Holy Saturday to get things set up!

And this is an Oxalis plant we saw at Estero Llano Grande State Park last week. It's about 2 inches high.

Estero Llano Grande Stare Park

Hello, everyone. Recently we drove a few miles over to the city of Weslaco and did our training walk at Estero Llano Grande.

Estero is very pleasant to walk in, with a gift shop/pay admission place and restrooms near the parking. It seems to have been created out of old farm fields that were converted to large water features to attract birds for viewing. And there are so many to see!

There is a pond that is reputed to have an alligator in residence, but none were visible there that day. We walked every bit of trail, going up to and down from the levee several times, and on our way out we encountered a friendly couple with large telescopes on tripods (likely serious bird watchers), who pointed out a young gator sunning on a log in the pond they were observing. 

He's such a young one! 

We looked at DH's Strava at the end and discovered that we had walked 6.62 miles--more than 10 km. 

That is more than the distance to be walked if one goes from Seville to the Roman ruins of Italica in Santiponce. ;-) Not including any wandering in the ruins, of course!

Beads plus embroidery in one!

Hello, everyone.  Today's post is about the newest completed project.

The start was a plan to make a rosary. Colors: beaches and oceans, gentle and natural and calm. Method: wire-wrapped loops. I used a special pliers that gives uniform loop sizes, but in hindsight perhaps I should have stuck with the old standard rosary pliers for making the loops. Even if those loops vary a bit in size, they come out a little smaller. At any rate, the loops are very even in size this time.

I also thought that the chaplet would need a little pouch to rest in. And that an embroidered design would be nice.

Opened up Hatch and digitized an Auspice Maria (AM) design, added some bits of decoration, and embroidered it onto a charm square. (Charm squares are 5 inches in size.) 

Sewed the charms onto a zipper, flirted with and rejected a lining--the iron on interfacing needed by the zipper is I think sufficient--and sewed the pouch together.