Gardens and Projects, etc.

bush with flowers

 First, let me just say that I don't garden.  I have a brown thumb.  I can grow weeds and dust bunnies (LOTS of dust bunnies)!

BUT...

My oldest son is learning to be a gardener.  This is the third year that he has planted and maintained the garden for me.  He does 

lavender plant

DH peaking thru the raspberries

a great job.  I buy plants, and he plants

them and keeps them alive. 

hanging basket

strawberry plant

block in progress

one more border needed

my block drawing

I have no idea what some of these plants are, but, they sure are pretty.  I DO know the lavender.  It smells so nice. 

My hubby is peaking through the raspberry vines.  These things are going wild.  I think even I could grow these without help.  Not many raspberries made it into the house last year.

I just love this funky hanging basket.  The colors are much better in real life.  I don't know why cameras can't capture color very well. 

I've always wanted a strawberry plant.  My son talked me into buying one this year.  I've already eaten half a dozen strawberries so far.

One of my quilt guilds is having a Santa block exchange.  I signed up for 2 sets of blocks.  This is the first block that I'm working on.  I just started on them last week.  We are supposed to exchange them at the July meeting.  I have most of the pieces cut out.  I only have to cut the rectangles for the last border.  I hope to have this set done before next week. 

I'm thinking about having an applique Santa in the second set of blocks.  I haven't worked with fuseable applique before.  I have the pattern and the fabric.  Joann's had the Steam-a seam lite on sale this past weekend. 

The finished blocks have to be 12".  They have to either have a Santa in the fabric or a Santa appliqued in the block.  The block has to have green in it.  It also has to be traditional Christmas colors.  The background has to be white.

Santa fabric was hard to come by this year.  I finally found this fabric online.  I had the green and the white in my stash.  I have two really big buckets of Christmas fabrics I've collected since the last Santa block exchange we did in 2005.  That was a fun quilt to make.  I used all my 'test' blocks and extra blocks on the back of the quilt.  If the applique Santa doesn't work out, it may be a 'test' block, too.  We'll see.