Catching Up

If you are looking for my current giveaway post, click here.  Today is the last day to leave your comment for a chance to win a yummy charm pack.  

After a stormy weekend the sun has been shining brightly for the past hour or so, and a welcome sight it is!  The wind blew most of the plum blossoms off the tree but hopefully the bees have had time to do their magic and we'll see some plums later this summer.  The apple trees are now budding out quickly and the pears will be in full bloom later this week.   Hoping we've had the last of any hard freezes for the year.

We did get out between storms on Saturday and dug up most of the new raspberry starts that came up from runners outside their designated area, and the entire row was weeded and mulched.  A few of the starts were replanted into the sparse areas of the row, but this other batch will soon be loaded in the car and off to their new home on another hillside not too many miles away.  Hint:  watch for a future episode of Smitty's escapades digging in the garden!

My sister will take home another batch tomorrow when she comes to pick up her cat after a week-long trip to the other coast.   We also have new neighbors just down the hill who will be gifted with future starts that are sure to crop up in the next few weeks (I hope they want them!).   We were gifted 5 or 6 starts of these plants eleven years ago by a co-worker shortly after we moved up to our hillside acres, and have nursed them through deer attacks, numerous transplantings and other adventures and those few starts are now a 25+ foot row that provides all we can eat during the summer plus around 20 quarts for the freezer or jamming.   I love gifts that keep on giving!

Today is quilt guild day, and I'll be taking the latest baby quilt to donate to the layette project.  I'll also take along this quilt to show the ladies what is destined to become my next hand project after completing the quilting on the Biblical Blocks quilt.   

This little vintage primitive Sunbonnet kids crib quilt was acquired fairly recently.  I was aware that Sunbathing Sue had been inundated by a rogue ink wave, but it appeared that there was enough of the border fabrics to remake the bottom of the quilt by removing the entire bottom row of blocks and piecing the good portions of the borders around the remaining nine blocks, which will still leave a quilt of nearly 44 x 44 inches.  The old ink stain is set in and if I experiment with various methods of removal it will be after that block is removed from the rest of the quilt.  The two right-hand blocks in that last row will become either one or two pillows, perhaps edged with some of the vintage ric-rack from my small stash or some cluny lace, maybe both.  Do you have any other ideas for these extra blocks?  Please send them my way if you do!   The fabrics in the remainder of the quilt are in excellent if a bit faded condition, and the batting puffed up nicely when it was washed earlier this morning (these photos were taken before washing).  It appears to be entirely made by hand, the quilting is quite primitive and 4-5 stitches per inch, only outlining the appliques and the blocks.  The appliques are similarly stitched with fairly large hand stitching, which leads me to think this was probably created by a beginning stitcher, perhaps a fairly young girl.

Gotta run now, and pack up those raspberry plants, all my gear for quilt guild, and finish the laundry before heading out.    Tomorrow I'll announce the winner of the giveaway and share some recent mail goodies.   Til then, enjoy the sunshine in your neck of the woods!