Bow Ties and Butterflies and Broken Dishes

I am finally back with a few quilting tidbits. The first is the quilt I made with bow tie blocks from last year's swap organized by Barb Vedder over at Fun With Barb.

I'm glad I chose the modern version for the swap as the cheery colors will nicely brighten my basement sewing room. While making the swap blocks I was also sewing scraps into broken dishes blocks. At the time it didn't occur to me that I might use them together, but the bow ties ended up being perfect for the border. Since it's a busy quilt I kept the quilting to a simple zig zag pattern, not unlike what you might see on the big quilts movers use to wrap furniture, but on a bigger scale.

As I was scrolling through my photos for this post it occurred to me that my arrangement of bow ties makes then look a little like butterflies. Or maybe it was just the power of suggestion since a bunch of recent photos of butterflies popped up too. My favorite fall wildflower, Liatris, commonly known as gayfeather, has been growing profusely this year. It is clearly also favored by butterflies. Happy butterfly season!

Pipevine swallowtail on gayfeather

Southern dogface on gayfeather

Back to quilting. Now that bow tie quilt is about done, I am ready to receive this year's batch of swap blocks (in the broken dishes pattern!), which Barb promises are now in the mail. Here are my blocks just before I mailed them off to Barb. I'm eager to see what I get in return.

Finally, here is where I have gotten to on my little hand-pieced scrap quilt which I have been hand quilting in spare moments while at home.

I'm still not sure what I will put in the solid squares, but I'm leaning towards some sort of floral motif from my summer travels in China.

A Flower Filled Spring

I've said before that spring is a wonderful time to be in central Texas. This year was no exception. In fact, it was the best wildflower year I think I have ever seen. Thanks to substantial and well-timed rains from winter through spring the flowers got just the right mix of water, sun and warmth for spectacular shows.

Texas Mountain Laurels, a small evergreen tree, bloomed in February. This one attracted dozens of Pipevine swallowtail butterflies.

Bluebonnets, or Lupinus texensis, the state flower of Texas provided the first no-holds barred show of meadow flowers.

I love how they glow in the late afternoon light.

These cactus were, for once, more flower than spine. I still wouldn't advise that you try to pick them.

Just as the bluebonnets were fading, these little yellow flowers, brown bitterweed, opened up.

And then came Indian blankets, acres and acres of orangey red.

Even the deer seem amazed.

Up close you can see how the petals vary from red with yellow tips to entirely red.

The other nice thing about being at home for a while this spring was that I made so much progress on my various projects. I finished knitting the Calza shawl I was working on during March's cruise. (The pattern is available through Webs here.) Manos del Uruguay Serena hand-dyed yarn (60% baby alpaca, 40% cotton) is a delight to work with and results in subtle color variations. The finished shawl is light, soft and drapes beautifully.

The simple short-row pattern is worked in garter-stitch with a ribbed cable on the long end so both sides look exactly the same. Ta da! Completely reversible! I have gotten lots of use from it already, finding it great for airplane rides (remember the days when they offered blankets for free?) and over-air-conditioned restaurants.

On the quilting front, I finished piecing and quilting my Cookie Tree quilt. It awaits a binding.

I also finished piecing and quilting this broken star quilt for my younger daughter. It too still needs a binding.

I quilted the star's diamonds using an orange peel design and the background in a radiating pattern of alternating wavy and squiggly lines. I added up my quilting time and was amazed that it came to over eight hours!

I made a set of placemats out of some blocks leftover from another quilt. They were a fun way to practice freehand quilting on my long arm machine before I attempted the star quilt above.

I finished enough sixteen-patch blocks for a quilt and started putting them all together.

And finally, I have kept up with the "Westering Women" block of the month. Month four, Lone Elm, has so many pieces that it is naturally a very busy looking block. I think my use of only three fabrics helps to alleviate that and makes the overall tree design stronger.

My next post or two will be about China so I hope you'll visit again soon!