Sunday Sewing

I needed about twenty more feet of red thread in my bobbin to finish this bag. I've been inundated with images of essential oil bags on the internet. Someone gave me some Doterra samples and the Breathe blend did help when I was fighting the office crud. 

I've made enough zippered bags to try and figure it out myself.

It's a basic pouch with extra padding and little slots to store  your oils upright. I cut a wide (6") strip of fabric that was pretty long (WOF 44") for the slots. I used a scrap of thin batting inside and folded the strip over it. Then I used some 1/4" double wide folded bias tape to bind the raw edges.

I don't have any essential oil bottles, so I used some gutermann thread spools to space my slots.
After sewing the divider lines, I sewed along the bottom edge. pleating the slot flat as I sewed.

I pretty much eyeballed this project as far as sizes go.

Everything was in the right place for when you box the corners to make the base of the bag.
The slots sit on the bottom of the bag which is what I intended but had to guess at the location during construction.

I have enough padded fabric to make an insert to hold some more bottles. This will have a grommet at the corner - if you want to take it out of the bag - you could hook it somewhere.
In fact, it looks like I can get two inserts to fit inside this bag. We'll see.

The rain held off (The Daily Drizzle), so I went out and weeded and pruned for a couple of hours. Made some big piles of stuff that will need to be hauled off to either the compost pile or the burn pile.
 

 It's supposed to get to 75 or 80' by Wednesday. Woohoo. Then the temperature tumbles back down. But at least The Daily Drizzle is sputtering a bit.

 My other project today was to rip off this binding from the swing awning. I replaced this awning a few years ago and it looks grotty from being outside in the weather. I used Sunbrella fabrics which resist UV damage.

 Here is the awning laid out with the binding curled up in a pile.
The whole cover looks grotty, but I need it for a pattern.

Someone gave me some outdoor fabric which may or may not be sunbrella brand. I am going to try washing the binding and re-use it so I don't have to make new. If I recall, it was pretty dang expensive.

The new cover will be khaki green with this brighter green with big blue Hawaiian? blob flowers for the edge pieces. It's all single layer. The binding encases the flippy part edge (stripe) and helps to weigh it down so it's not so flippy in the wind.

 We'll see how it goes. This outdoor swing was gifted to me for Mother's Day (& birthday!) several years ago. Maybe 15 years ago? So this will be my third time re-doing the awning.

Hosta with Forget-me-nots

Mini-Iris

Apple blossom

My Bloodgood Japanese Maple is 26 years old and very, very big and luscious. These are the last of tulips to bloom with a little fringe on top.

That's the Stearman poking out of the hangar. Both planes are inside (mostly). The Piper J-5 has it's wings on and will do a first flight here in a few weeks. Lots of piddly things to check off the list before test run ups can be done.

 I was trying to capture this happy happenstance of the  deep purple iris in front of the neon new green of the spirea bush.

 I took these Spring flower photos a few days ago in between rain showers.

Happy Sunday!

Tag says Flying High

Spring Embroidery

There you go.
Embroidery done.
Framed.

I had intended to make this 4 inch embroidery from MollieMakes Magazine into a card or incorporate it into a small frame purse. When I walked into my sewing room, this vintage Hawaiian Textiles print jumped up off the lower shelf and told me I had to make this into hoop art.

The colors and shapes of the leaves and flowers are uncanny in their similarities.

I backed the hoop with some felt from stash, the hoop also came from stash, and it's already packaged and into the mailstream to the person I was thinking about when I was stitching this.

Pruning canadian hemlocks. Vacant bird condo was relocated to a special spot near the front door.

  After our cold, snowy winter, we are enjoying daily deluges of rain, making the ground pretty soggy.

Too soggy to weed.

When a neighbor cut down some trees, I jumped at the free chip mulch. I spread it right over that Artillery Weed - super thick. Now I don't see the weeds but these glorious red tulips.

I call this ecological recycling as the chip mulch didn't have to travel far, thus saving our planet for another day. lol

These happen to be my favorite tulips that survived our gale force windstorm yesterday. I hurried out to take a photo before the storm hit but these are protected a bit by the lilac tree bushes.

Music box on my dash of my car.

My super garage sale find of the week. A treadle sewing machine music box. Still trying to identify the tune - we've all heard it before -- sounds so familiar....

I need to dust it off and spruce it up a bit. The treadle portion goes up and down while the music plays. It's about 6 inches high.


Need more photos of artillery weed? When it goes to seed, the seeds pop off and get in your eyeballs?

There Was Sewing Done

 I made a similar book bag a few weeks ago and immediately received an order for another.
This customer wanted elephants inside the tote.

I was looking for a blue kokka elephant fabric for the inside lining but had to settle on this pasha elephant instead. I believe I have some blue elephants but they may be airplanes instead. Zowie - there goes my mental mindkeeping. I'm almost certain they are inside my sewing room hiding in plain site.
 
haha - here they are. they can't hide forever...

 The book tote is completely reversible so she can put her big books out there or throw the elephants around.

I had some Yoko Saito books come through my library queue and I'm enjoying thumbing through for inspiration. My blogging friend, Mrs. N,  is learning to do Japanese patchwork and I thought to do some myself.


I had to work today for a few hours. I'm very proud of myself - I rode my bike into town and back. Its just over 3 miles to my work place. I need to do this more often. My schedule changes so much and it's difficult to predict. I don't want to be on my busy roads at twilight.
I could always bike in, and if I need to, call my hubby to come pick me up.


We celebrated Memorial Day yesterday with BBQ baby back ribs, baked beans and potato salad.
The weather has been much cooler than a year ago when we were already sweltering under 100' days. This May has been averaging 70' or so making it very comfortable to sit outside on the patio and enjoy our dinner.


I'm trying to get my yard in shape and my new nemesis is the garter snake.
This is the year of the garter snake. 

 

The last few years have been all about cute baby rabbits which are not to be seen (at all!) this year. A whole lotta shrieking has been heard around here as Mr. Snake slithers away from where I'm about to step.


My vegetable garden is still a mass of weeds but I'm almost through whacking them down so I can roto till and re-do the compost piles and show those garter snakes who's the boss.

---breathe---

I made some more microwave cozy hot pads for my etsy shop too. Sewing is easy on these but it took me three sessions in the sewing room to get them done. I just love these red thimbles on the fabric. I found this fabric in Hawaii back in January. So perfect for the sewing enthusiast!

On that note, I'm ready again to try and get computer viruses just so I can watch The Great British Sewing Bee which is now up to season 4.

Recently. someone released season 1 to youtube but I think I would buy it if it were available. This show is sew much better than Project Runway with real sewing getting done and no drama - at all!  Getting little snippets is not my preferred way to watch tv. I saw on Netflix, they are carrying the Great British Bake-off ---- so maybe they will add the Sewing show too.

I had both kids home last week - not at the same time. It was so pleasant to catch up on their news. I am so grateful both of my kids are functioning adults and really living their lives.
 
We'll see the son again multiple times this month as he moves from central oregon to his new digs south of us  and settles in on his pharmaceutical residency. He graduates as a doctor in two weeks. Proud mama.

Part Of My Yard

Happy May Day!

Busy weeding my acre this time of year in-between 12 hour split shifts at work and the wonderful April weather.

As you can see, Rusty, who is on better pain meds, helps supervise.

 I weeded half of this bed surrounding our patio. Then gave up moved onto another place that needed attention. I have to cut back the tulips and grab the artillery weeds. The blue on the left is lithospermum.

The house is on the left with the airplane hangar (doors closed) straight ahead.
I've lived on my acre for 26 years. Plants die. Plants get too big. Plants are amazing. We have fairly mild winters here in the Willamette Valley, but once every six years or so, we get hard freezes, ice, and significant snow. (No snow this winter except for one morning). Two years ago, the Lithospermum completely died back but I saw some green shoots near the base and babied it and here it is, lush as ever.

 Stepping back a few paces, this is the pergola with clematis (montana) climbing it. The clematis shades us in the summers and you can sit outside and not get too wet during summer showers.
These clematis rotted off at the rootstock one winter - oh, 7 years ago, but they are now almost where they were before - coverage-wise.

We use our patio most of the year. There is a swing set that needs new cushions sewn. Has anyone noticed that replacement cushions are thinner on the foam? The ones that came with the swing were very comfy. We cook outside on the barbecue and watch the planes take off in the evenings.

Most readers know I live on an airpark. The runway adjoins our acre and runs mostly north-south.    Bucolic.   Anyone use that old-fashioned word lately?

You need patience to garden well. Plants are a tad unruly, not always listening to your mindset of how they should behave. That's okay.

 
 

 I still need to pot up my hanging baskets. I'm slow this year. I am waiting on the high school plant sale for the little extras plants that go into the baskets (excuseexcuseexcuse).

Tomorrow is my day off and it's forecast to be 80', so this job jumped to priority one.

My upright green japanese maple on the other side of the house sends forth babies that I pot up for the patio. These babies don't seem to grow as tall. I have done some bonsai with them, twisted the 'stems' into circles, played with them a bit. These are getting quite root-bound so I will either give these away at the end of this growing year or compost them and start fresh with some new babies.

Looking left from the patio is my side yard. This is the yard I look at from my kitchen window.
The curve of the beds is lovely. The beds on the left used to be shaded by 40 year old fir trees but we had a little leaning problem and rather then buy a new house for the neighbors, we elected to cut them down.
 

So this bed went from shady perennials to a very sunny, needs to be edited still bed. I have replanted some taller trees for the bird habitat but also as a living fence between us and the neighbors.  It is very difficult to edit my plants. I've known them for years and someday's I can't be ruthless enough. I tend to let the columbines live.

 I tried a panoramic shot looking at the house.
All it did was give the house and hangar a decidedly weird curve.
That's the grass runway to the far right.

My kitchen window on the right. Just in front is my bird feeder and hummingbird feeder (empty again?). That's hubby there doing something.

 Looking southeast towards the taxi-way, aka our street.

 Another view of looking out my kitchen window.
My living fence is filling out nicely this April. 
My goal is to not see that house there.

Those are my hostas there in front which amazingly took to the sun from being in the shade prior.

 And from the street end, looking towards the grass runway -- past the fir trees we left growing taller.
 
Serous hummingbird habitat up there in the firs along with owls and other birds. (not to mention the bats). We had an eagle thinking about setting up housekeeping two autumns  ago.

Another panoramic - the entire side length of the yard - about 300 yards?

Strawberries blooming for June.
.




***This is just my side yard. If you got this far - serious congratulations. This was a good place to put these photos for my reference.

Memorial Day Flowers and Sedums

Poppy

Columbine

Sedum

Another Sedum

 

There's Kale in my salad greens

My Patio view towards the Hangar

Zooming out. Swing is on the right.

 

 I used to garden under fir trees until we cut them down (falling). Mostly perennials.
I am slowly changing it over to shrubs and trees. Less work, I'm sure.

 The problem lies here. How cute is this columbine? How are you supposed to rip this out of the bed? I am such an easy mark.

 This is the fullness of Spring, all leafed out. Cleaned of weeds.
It is so not a Japanese pruned garden.
My inner self thrives in chaos and wants all the plants.

My goal is to screen out the dry rot view. Getting there slowly as my new trees grow up.
And maybe put some slug bait out so my Hosta leaves aren't in ribbons.