Update on the neighbours

Evenings have gradually been getting darker, so we have not been seeing much of our neighbours lately.  However, from what we have observed in the garden, it is obvious that they are still visiting now and then.

Yesterday at dusk I caught our repeat visitor in the act, with his nose up among the branches of a plum tree outside our kitchen window. When I had found my camera and come outside, he was on his guard:

It was already so dark that the camera had problems focussing, so the pictures are not as sharp as I should wish.

Still, it is not hard to see that he has gotten very fat over the summer.

He had no problems jumping the garden fence, though, – leaving behind some messy fruit trees…..

….. and then went on to eat some apples in the garden next door.

The hunting season starts in two weeks. I wonder if he will survive.

Eldrid

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Added:

Two days later, our plum trees looked like this:

I am beginning to regret that I am not fit enough to join the hunt myself.

On the other hand: we have been talking of having to thin the branches at the top, – maybe we will not have to do that now.

Eldrid

Pentagons and fabric balls

As suggested in a comment to my previous post, pentagons will make a sphere, or a ball, when they are sewed together.

It has already been done by lots of people, so here are a few examples, and also tutorials:

iHanna’s blog: Create and Live Happy

blog.burdafashion.com

Jinny Beyer wrote a whole book about making patchwork balls, using both pentagons and other shapes. There was not much information on her website about the balls, so here is a link to

softexpressions.com

where there are many more photos of different balls from the book.

Here is an example of an even more interesting ball, construction wise.

Interesting challenge, indeed!

I might just have to get that book.

Eldrid

Quilt Education 5

In my last posting about this project, I was searching for a suitable border fabric. I tried several colours, including some that were suggested in the comments to that post, but in the end I chose the green one.

My plans were to make this into a round pillow, so at first I cut a piece that was a bit larger than the pieced hexagons.

The papers were still in the outer row of hexagons, so I pinned next to the outer ring all around, and then tacked down each corner of the outer hexagons.

Then I sewed the outer edge of the hexagons to the border fabric, – a bit like appliqueing.

When I had finished sewing all around, I cut away the centre part of the border fabric.

When cutting through only one of several layers, I always use my duckbill scissors. The bill shaped tip goes underneath, and keeps the scissors from cutting into the layers below. (The scissors are actually hand made, and I bought them at a quilt show at Ascot in the UK 15 years ago, – they still work fine).

When the centre of the border fabric had been cut away……..

………..  removing the last round of papers was easy.

After that, I layered and pinned the quilt top…….

……… before I committed the deadly sin of machine quilting it.  My hands do not agree with hand quilting, so although I hope for forgiveness, I cannot promise not to do it again.

The quilting was very simple, – just one seam for every circle of patches, and then an echo seam into the border.

Then I made a back piece for the pillow, with a hidden zipper in the centre.

Next, I marked the circle on the pillow, using what I call “the poor man’s compass”:  a pencil on a string…..

….. and then cut out the circle.

The circle was placed right sides together on to the back piece, pinned, and sewed all around the edge.  Luckily I remembered to open the zipper before sewing.

After that, the back piece was cut even with the front, the raw edges were zigzagged, right sides were turned out through the unzipped opening, and…..

……….. voilà: the finished pillow!

If I had wanted it to be even more cutesy, I could have added a pink ruffle around the edges. Maybe on the next project, ….. because:

…. now I have even more remnants to make into new hexagons.

Patchwork is a never ending hobby!

Eldrid

Quilt Education 1

Quilt education 2

Quilt education 3

Quilt education 4

Irons

Apropos ironing, – when staying at our daughter’s this weekend, we also visited a private museum nearby. The museum has a collection of old log cabins, – the sort of houses that people lived in around here for hundreds of years, – complete with furniture and everyday tools. The photos below were taken inside one of the old houses.

Imagine washing your clothes or quilt fabrics with one of these:

…. and then ironing with one of these:

The two irons above are for heating on the stove.  Below is the “deluxe” variant:

Here you can fill the iron with burning coals, there is an opening at the back to adjust the air intake, and thus also the temperature, –  and it also has a small chimney to let out the smoke.

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I am still very fond of my electric iron, – and my washing machine.

I could very well imagine owning a woven coverlet like this, though:

Eldrid

Some guests are not welcome

This spring we planted nasturtiums for the first time in many, many years.  They are easy to grow, and I love the bright cheerful colours of the nasturtium flowers.

They really brighten up the corner where we planted them, and they are also climbing onto the terrace, and winding their way into nearby bushes.

Last week we had some rain, and when I looked at the nasturtiums again this week, I thought they did not look so good as they did before.

I wondered if it was the rain , or maybe the late summer time that got to them. However, when looking closely, there were the telltale signs:

Soon I also spotted the culprit:

The caterpillar of the cabbage butterfly loves both cabbage and nasturtiums, and it is almost unavoidable, – which is why I do not often plant nasturtiums even if they have lovely flowers.

There was only one thing to do: start picking caterpillars. Luckily my husband is home at the moment, and we are the perfect team: I look and point, and he picks. So far I think we must have disposed of 60-70 caterpillars, and new ones are turning up all the time.

Will we win the battle? Probably not entirely, but perhaps we will manage to save some flowers to bloom throughout August.

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To make this a tiny bit quilt related, here are some links to quilts with nasturtiums on them:

Mary Transom, New Zealand

Click on her gallery and classes to see more of her wonderful flower quilts.

Botanical Art Quilts

Scroll down to see several quilts with nasturtiums, – and stop to look at the other quilts too.

Adventures in Quilting

Scroll down and look for “Blazing Nasturtiums”.

Velda Newman

Ruth Powers

Maggie Wise – for sale

Ingrid’s webshot album – quilt made in a class with Ruth B McDowell

Cathy Van Bruggen – here is even a pattern if you want nasturtiums on fabric

Enjoy!

Eldrid

Cherries

My husband got a cherry tree for his 50th birthday. This year it had lots of flowers in the spring, and later we could see that lots of fruit were developing too.

Before my husband went away for his job in June, he tried to cover the tree with a net to protect the fruit.

The net was too small, so the tree was only partly covered.

We have been eyeing the cherries for the last couple of weeks, trying one now and then to see if they were ripe enough to eat.  Yesterday evening I visited Juliann’s blog, looking at the delicious photos and reading her mouth watering description of her cherries, – and looking forward to picking and eating our own.

This morning, when looking out of the kitchen window, I could not see a single cherry on our tree.  “Where are our cherries”, I asked my husband.  He went out to look, and came back in with four cherries, – that was all he could find, except for a lot of cherry seeds on the tree and on the ground.

Now, if we only count the price of the net that was on the tree (which had been ripped open), each cherry is about NOK 40. We ate them for dessert today, – with reverence.

Afterwards I produced these, which I had bought in the shop for “only” NOK 99 per kilo:

They were both cheaper and tastier.

Eldrid

Mangle

When my father retired, he took up wood carving, among other things.  A few years back he gave me the mangle below, – it is called “mangletre” in Norwegian.

It is an old fashioned ironing device, – the linen was rolled onto a pole and then  pressed smooth with the “mangletre”. This was heavy work, so people switched to mangle machines and irons as soon as they became available.

In some areas the young man often brought a finely carved mangle as a gift to the girl he would ask to marry him.  The handle was often shaped like a horse for strength and fertility.

It is a popular item to make among today’s woodcarvers as well, but now it is only for decorative use.  It sure is beautiful, and one day I would like to take some of the decor elements and use for an applique piece.

I love my mangle, but am also happy that I have a really good iron.

Eldrid