April Cornucopia

 

Here is a cornucopia post for April, collecting links to many of the things that I enjoyed reading or seeing online during the past month. The picture above is an overgrown Honey Bush flower stalk resting on the top of the green waste cart. This is the weirdest looking plant that I am currently growing my garden. It's from South Africa, Melianthus Major, and it supposedly smells like peanut butter. I disagree on that one.

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Move the Needle, a free 3-day machine quilting online event is happening May13-15.

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Sue Spargo is doing a free block series, Bits & Pieces, combines embroidery with block making in interesting ways.

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A possibly new way to assemble a Potato Chip block. I have yet to make one yet, so I don't know that this is actually new.

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AQS has a a Quilt Across the USA creativity challenge going with 50 state blocks from Bonnie K. Browning's OOP book: "Vintage Quilt Blocks, State by State." Some of them are quite interesting and they're highlighting how to make them with American Made solids which is cool..

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I hadn't looked at Spoonflower in a while, and I really love this fabric collection: Banksia by gabrielleneildesign.

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I'm getting interested in ruler quilting, so this video from Quilting Curve Studio was really fun to watch.

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I kind of want to get some of these tiles made from urchinite - mineralized purple sea urchin shells, so pretty!

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Apparently we've been spraying Roundup on our national forests in very large amounts.

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I'm enjoying listening to some of the concert recordings that are archived here, all sorts of artists available to listen to. Thank you Internet Archive for hosting.

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Wandering Wednesday -Englishman River Falls

 One of the places we visited in Canada was Englishman River Falls, which is on Vancouver Island. It was a beautiful place to hike, not too hard, and there was a very interesting type of waterfall.

It was a very grey and maybe a rainy day, so we pre-gamed with some Tim Horton's (of course). My cousins tell me that it's terrible now that an American company has taken it over. I thought the coffee was decent and the donut was just so-so.

Everything was quite mossy, and there were a lot of warning signs, which DH was taking quite seriously as you can see illustrated here.

When I first saw the upper falls, I'll admit I was a bit confused. Not a traditional single cascade waterfall, this is more spread out, kind of like Niagara Falls is.

The water from the river comes down from a lot of angles and then it all funnels into this small slot canyon.

We decided to call it a Slot Falls.  Quite a lot of force! Apparently it is a dumb high school graduation dare to jump in there. Yes into the slot opening. Presumably the river is running much lower in June. But it doesn't turn out well for everyone. 

This is the view into the deep pool after the falls.

I was fascinated by the patterns of spinning white froth against the cliff edges.

It really was quite mossy!

Some very lovely Pacific Trillium.

Up above the falls, the river was moving swiftly but it was quite peaceful. There was a very wide swath of pebbly beach, when the rains or snowmelt are really going the whole thing is filled with water.

When you hike down the trail there's a point where you can look back up the canyon at the falls. It's really quite tight in there! The bridge we were on is visible up above.

The deep water was such a beautiful shade of green. I was fascinated by the wood debris, all the tree trunks stuck in various places and the large piles of wood left behind by the spring river flow.

A waterfall selfie was taken, of course.

The lower falls weren't as exciting, but I did love the deep green blue in contrast with all the moss and other rock growing plants.

There was a lot more visible action in the lower falls.

A truly amazing amount of moss!

We were really glad that my cousin recommended traveling up to this park, it was well worth the drive.

Clover Pillow Finish

 

I figured out a closure for the Clover Pillow and now declare it done!

Another of my many many UFO's is finished, thanks to the quickly approaching deadline associated with the BAMQ UFO challenge. 

Velcro for the win again. Glad to have this finished, and ready to put this pillow to use.

Clover Pillow

 

I just remembered that I needed to work on my #1 item on my BAMQ UFO Challenge List before this Saturday's Sew Day. It's the Clover quilt, from the Tara Faughan Color Collective class that I tried out back in 2023. I decided that I didn't want to make more of the gigantic blocks, and would rather make a super big pillow(case).

The rough quilted edges really need to be managed so that it'll stand up to repeated washings.

Time to try out my Lap Seam foot to seal up those edges.

I found a great fabric in my stash that matches so well to use as the backing of the pillowcase.

Went around all four sides and left myself a space to turn it all open.

The corners turned out pretty well.

I pushed the corners out a little more so that they're a bit rounded. Now to finish the opening where the pillow will be inserted, and figure out if there will be a closure needed or not.

Gray Lines & Gold Rectangles

Working on adding the "drawn" lines in my initial sketch using the light blue thread 

And then a light grey.

Now for the second line, this one is meant to be lighter so I'll only use the grey thread.

Beginning the application of gold sheer rectangles. Lots of pinning.

The layers of gold sheers are being applied one at a time, because I want the overlaying rectangles to be visible marks.

Here's how it is looking, getting closer to done.

Blue Sheer Managed

 

Back home from a trip and back to work on Ocean Effect. The printed blue sheer needs attaching. and I'm trying not to lose the happenstance curve that I think works within the green rectangle.

I picked a fairly light blue thread and got to stitching. I decided to let the cut edge of the blue sheer create a slightly curved line.

I'm liking how it is looking with some stitching.

There it is, the bottom section, with the unfinished edges of the quilt showing.

And here's the whole thing with the edges turned back and pinned. I'm glad that I introduced a slightly curvy line for some variety. I like it!

Ocean Effect Quilted

 

Ocean Effect is all quilted now. This is not exactly how the finished quilt will look, the edges are only folded under and pinned for the photo. I am glad that the angle didn't end up on in the corner, that was my plan and I'm glad it worked.Now to work on adding the other parts of the design.