Last weekend was warm and sunny and the leaves were at their peak color for viewing, we made a pot of chile, packed up the Coleman stove and canoe and went north to our favorite little lake.

The grand kids we're excited to ride in the canoe and later went out one at a time with grandpa and got to paddle themselves.

While they canoed I warmed up the chile and set up a area to play around with pounding leaves on fabric.

I brought along some white (premordanted with alum) cotton, we collected leaves, laid them on the fabric, covered the leaf with clear packing tape and pounded it with a hammer.
The tape keeps the leaf from breaking up and keeps the dye in place.

Everyone pounded a leaf or two during the day.

We ended up with pleasing pattern, I'm going to make my daughter a round quilted mat for her table with machine embroidery accenting the leaves and quilting in between.
I did this years ago when my kids we're little and didn't use premordanted fabric, it took just fine. I would make sure the fabric is prewashed.

We took a wonderful walk through the woods.

Found this fallen birch tree, the boys took turns learning how to take off the bark.

At the end of the day Melissa carried up the canoe to the vehicle, the boys were a lot of help!

OK, back home and the boys still haven't gotten enough of the leaves, Grandpa rakes them up and they dive in. Have you ever seen a swan dive into a pile of leaves?

Or a cannon ball dive?

And one more dive!

Halloween purse

I found this wonderful Alexander Henry fabric called The Ghastlies, I knew right away I wanted to make it into a purse for October/Halloween.

I love the three knitters on this piece.

I fussy cut out my favorite pictures.

Laid them out on batting with the purse design sketched in.

After figuring out the placement I took them off, spray basted a piece of gray (tweed) print fabric from Kaffee Fassett placing it on the batting, then spray basted the Halloween fabric and placed it on the gray tweed. Machine quilted around the figures and patches then stitched the purse together. I finished the edges with black binding.

My finished purse, the front.

And the back. Ready for October.

I also finished another lattice strip for my family tree quilt, this will be sewed on next to my mom's childhood home block. I have learned sooo many family stories while making this quilt. I knew my grandparents loved farming but didn't realize they raised chickens in their back yard while living in town. After the children were grown they bought a big beautiful farm out in the country, they were quite old to start over farming.

OK, if your sick of seeing my grand kids you might want to stop reading this blog now.


We have been having so much fun showing them "Michigan in Fall".

Last weekend we took them to a big farm in the country on a wonderful hayride with horses.

Of course you had to have homemade cinnamon & sugar donuts to eat on the ride.

Over the river and through the woods and at the end of the hayride there was a huge field full of pumpkins that you could choose from and pick your own.

A picture with their cousin. This reminds me of the movie Charlie Brown's Hallowen with Linus in the pumpking patch.

Pulling our treasures with grandpa back to the wagon for the ride back.

They also had a apple orchard. We picked a big bag to use for making apple pies.

Back home the leaves are just beginning to fall, the kids couldn't wait to rake and jump in the pile.

I played with dye printing my coreopsis flowers. Look at the wonderful color they dyed. The yellow of the petals gave a beautiful peachy orange. The inner red of the petals dyed navy blue! And the dark center dyed red. The fabric looks a little like leopard spots.
Double click on the picture to see the blue.

My cosmos dyed fabric is a completely different peachy orange. I'm going to make this piece into a winter scarf, blanket stitching the edge with the wool yarn I also dyed with cosmos.

I planted two different types of eucalyptus this year, the long oval shaped leaves didn't give the orange color but the stems did.
This piece will be beautiful in my quilt.

I love how translucent the leave prints looks with the orange stems.

The silver dollar eucalyptus leave give the dark orange color.

My grand kids have never really seen the changing color of leaves in fall so off we go taking picnics and color tours up North. Even though the color isn't at its peak yet we're enjoying Autumn hikes with many more to go.

I believe this is a artisan spring bubbling up from the ground and spilling into the waterfall.

Of course, if there is water and rocks the boys will be in them.

We're home

We're home and our family is here too! My husband and I went to Florida to help pack up our daughter and her family and help them move back to Michigan. Talk about a lot of work, but we made it and everyone is getting settled in. What fun we'll have, everyone is excited to be back and looking forward to spending more time with family.

The guys drove the moving truck.

One final time buying Southern boiled peanuts.

Last night at our Herb Society we had a special guest speaker who is a chef at Disney World. He prepared a special meal for us, making dishes from around the world.

Our tables are always wonderfully decorated. Guinness cupcakes, (recipe from the United Kingdom).

Wonderful ceramic Mickey Mouse kitchen figurines.

Disney sugar cookies.

Our chef Justin.

Marrakesh Curried vegetables with curry powder over couscous.

Pineapple bread pudding, (Polynesian).

Raspberry Fool. Rose & Crown Pub-United Kingdom.
We also had Kjottkake, traditional meatballs for Norway with Lingonberry Demi Sauce.
Tandoori butter on pita bread, and spiced ice tea.

Coreopsis

I spent some time this past weekend dyeing with coreopsis. They are tiny little flowers but hold a lot of color. They're a few different varieties, the type I used was coreopsis tinctoria, I've noticed if the Latin name for the plant has tinctoria in it, it is a great dye plant.

The flowers are about the size of a penny.

I simmered them about a hour then put the wool fabric in, it became a beautiful peachy orange color right away.

Some of the fabric I bundled so it would have different shades. The wool yarn I had dyed before. it was a brassy yellow so back into the dye pot it went.

This is the collection of vintage linen napkins I've been dyeing all summer, starting with daffodils last spring.

And cotton fabrics. They seem to take the color the same as linen.

I don't know if I showed this before but I just finished needle felting the rabbits tails in. This is one of the lattice strips for my family tree quilt. This will go around the husband's childhood home.

My sunflowers are beautiful this year, I think they're about 10 feet tall. The plain yellow ones are Hopi sunflowers (I sent away for the seeds). I'm going to try dyeing with the seeds later.

I won't be posting for the next couple of weeks, I'll be visiting with family.
See you the end of September.