This and That

I had wanted to go out this morning, but it is raining, again!  When is this wet weather going to end?

Thank you to everyone who voted for my miniature paper pieced quilt last weekend.  I got 26 votes, not enough for a win, but I'm happy with that.

I also hope that all my friends to the south of us had a great Fourth of July yesterday.

Sorry, I have been missing in action this week.  Monday was a holiday, but that should not have made much difference.  Every day is a holiday for me.  LOL  Then on Wednesday I had a dentist appointment.  Since it only involved putting a filling back in and the fact that I was totally done by 9:00 am, shouldn't have made any difference either.  I guess the thing that bugged me the most this week was trying to locate my photos on my computer.  You see, I sort of, inadvertently, deleted them.  Doh!  How I did that I have no idea.  But they were all gone.  Then last night I was trying different things and I found them on Picassa.  Have no idea how that happened.  Now I have to figure out how access them.

I will now sort of back track over the past week and show you what's been going on around here.  Here is my design wall on Monday.

I am pretty happy with it and think I will sew it together today.  It now measures about 44 in. by 60.5 in.  I may add one more row to the sides and one more row to the bottom.  I'll see how it goes.

I have also been working on another scrappy quilt.  This is a 16-patch.  I have been making these blocks whenever I have a spare moment.  Not too many of those around here, but I do have about 14 blocks done.  Here are 10 of them sewn together.

Now onto Wildflower Wednesday.
The flower for this week was one of the ones I lost.  Actually I found it, but can't figure out how to get to it.  So I have decided to show you the plant, Yarrow.  This plant grows everywhere.  It likes direct sun and fertile ground, but is also happy is less perfect conditions.

This one is growing in my backyard.  I have no idea how it got there.  Maybe I planted it many years ago.  It has soft feathery leaves and that is the reason why it is still in my garden.  One of my old cats, Tobicat, loved to sleep on this feathery plant when the temperatures sky rocketed in the summer.  In fact, we buried his ashes under this plant.  It has great sentimental value and we will never remove it, but I did trim it back a bit this spring because it was getting out of hand.

Yarrow is a very useful plant.  It has been used for food.  The leaves can be eaten like spinach or cooked  in soups.  Plus it has a huge range of medicinal uses.  It has been used as a diuretic, a blood tonic and to treat nosebleeds and menstrual disorders.  Early Europeans took it into battle to treat wounds.  Native Americans used it to treat toothaches and head colds.  A poultice was applied to burns and a tea was made to reduce fever and aid in restful sleep.  And if you could ask Tobicat, he would tell you it makes a wonderful cool, soft bed to nap on.

The botanical name for Yarrow is, Achillea millefolium.  It is in the Asteraceae family.  I also have some light pink ones in my garden and a yellow one which I bought this year.  It is in the front garden and I couldn't get a photo because it meant walking on the grass and that is still difficult for me to do.

My garden is spectacular this year.  I guess it's all that rain we've been getting!  I love this yellow lily.  The colour is so bright and cheerful.

And my first day lily opened this morning.  It is a peach coloured single blossom one.  I love it!  You can see the lavender in the background.  Also very pretty and aromatic.

That's about all for this week.  Wishing everyone a fantastic weekend!

Please Vote for Me

Edited at 9:00pm.  I apologize if anyone was confused about the link to the Quilting Gallery. Apparently it was not up and running until now.  Please try again if you have come back to my post. It works now.  You'll have to scroll down to the thumbnail photos.  But you can now see the quilts and you can vote on them.

When I realized the Quilting Gallery was showing paper pieced quilts this week, I decided to enter a little quilt I finished several years ago.  This is the first paper pieced quilt I have ever finished.

The quilts that are submitted to this weekly gallery are always amazing.  Go over there and just take a look around.  It is truly eye candy.  Of course you can vote for any of them that you like.  But I would really appreciate it if you vote for mine.  LOL  I have never done this before.


As for my Friday finish...  Well, there isn't one.  It was just too hot to sew this week.  And I had company for the first part of it.  Then there were the get togethers with friends.  Just too much to do in one week.  But I do have something to show you.  I joined Em's Scrap Happy Summer 2013.  I plan to finish a lot of UFOs this summer.  Here is the first one I am working on.  Only a couple of rows to go.

When my DD returns my cutting table, (she borrowed it for her party last night) I will sandwich it and quilt it and show it finished - as soon as I can.