Flannel Scraps, Hydrangeas, and other pix from the NW

 We're at my families cabin on Hood Canal for a couple of weeks. 

 Of course I brought my sewing machine and a box of scraps.  Here are a couple of layouts.  This first one I thought I'd try to use all the big scraps.  I call these "big Chunk" quilts.  It needs some messaging... 

 

This second one is all the bits and bobs leftover from a variety of projects.  This one needs A Lot of messaging...

It's all fun!!!!

Besides sewing ...

 The weather has been so beautiful we've really gotten out and about.

The Hydrangeas around the neighborhood are in full bloom.  They just knocks me out.   The blue is so intense and that shade of purple?!  All on one plant!

Yesterday we drove up to the top of Mt. Walker.  The road was all gravel but it was worth the bumpy ride. The road leads to two view points one on the North side and one on the South side at the top of the mountain.

From the South you can see Mt. Rainier.  I used the zoom on this shot so it appears a lot closer than it is.  The closest band of water is Hood Canal. Farther away are other parts of Puget Sound.

Here's a Pano shot of the South view.

Then we drove over to the North side.  That's Mt. Baker off in the distance and the band of blue just below it is the North end of Hood Canal.

Today we took a short hike to Murhut Falls in the Olympic Forest.

Wow!

Ferns abound in misty environs of the water fall.

There were lots of these, one of my favorite ferns.  I call them five finger ferns. I don't know what the proper name is but I think they are related to maiden hair ferns.  

I hope you are enjoying your Summer!

take care, cw

Arial View Quilts

 I've seen lots of pix on Pinterest of Map type quilts so I guess it's a big thing.  Any who, after I got home from my plane ride in April I started really looking around the internet and found a wealth of pictures and ideas for Arial View Quilts.

I have at least a couple of pounds worth of green scrapes so I started to sort.  I managed to cover pretty much every available surface in my play area!

I also have this wonderful print that I've been saving for probably at lease 20 years.  I have two yards of it.  I think it will make a wonderful border!

Ive seen a lot of Arial views that are grid like but I think I would like to try for a more random view.  Kind of like what I saw from the plane.

They still have squares and rectangles of fields but it's not so N/ S and E/ W.

Even tho' the brown patches are part of the landscape in our Draught plagued part of the world I think I'm going to make it more green than brown...

Well after all that play and pondering I still have a few CZU quilts to quilt so the arial landscape will have to wait for a little while.

 Seek shade,  stay cool...

take care, cw

Spring comes slowly

 We've had a very cool Spring here on the Central Coast of California.  Lots of morning mist and lots of 60 degrees days.  But that's OK.  With the drought and fire danger,  cool and damp is just fine with me.  Even with the cool temperatures the Spring flowers have been providing us with some wonderful displays.

Our Hawthorne tree has been really spectacular!  Normally I don't snip much from it but there was a big branch getting into the path so I took that big branch off and made some arrangements for the house.

I started with the biggest vase I own and put it in the entry way.  There were still some big pieces so I got out another big vase and made a second arrangement for the kitchen.

And there was still a couple of little branches for the family room.

The little clusters of flowers are so pretty!  They remind me of miniature roses.

Gardening takes precedent over sewing this time of year so I have not been doing much sewing but I have been trying to organize and clean my stash and quilt collection.  I have so many quilts and some of them I never use!  Some I could never part with but some I could,  so I've been culling.  These three are the latest donations.

I made this one for the cabin but I'm not real attached to it.

This one was made for a challenge.  Sometimes challenges don't turn out as you imagined them...

This last one was a block of the month that I designed for the guild.  I really like it but I have another bigger one of the same pattern I don't need them both.

In my last post I said I was searching for pictorial  fabrics from the 1800"s.  I'm still searching I will post pix of my finds next time.

Have a great week!

take care, cw