Camped Out

We had a little bit of a dry period this morning, and so I used the opportunity to take some pictures of the flowers outside. The weather is supposed to be beautiful next week, and I think everything is going to burst into bloom. The bleeding heart is covered with flowers right now.

Thanks to those of you who clued me into the name of this next one, an Andromeda. It still has a little ways to go for the red blossoms/leaf clusters to be fully opened, but it's very close.

I thought this poor little azalea might be dead, but it's blooming away...

Not as impressive as this one, however. Again, it's a difference in the amount of sunshine they get.

The clematis is at its absolute most beautiful right now. 

It is covered with blossoms.

The wisteria is tantalizingly close.

Here, you can see how some of the blossoms on the left of the image above have started opening.

Also tantalizingly close is this rhododendron.

The rain isn't doing it any good, but here's one opened blossom that is sheltered in among the leaves of the plant.

More flowers to come, and you can bet I'll be out taking pictures of them.

Before I tell you what happened in the sewing room today, I wanted to follow up on my post from this morning where I showed you some of my grandmother's handkerchiefs. When I wrote the post, I had questions about how the square holes in the linen hankie below are done. I wasn't sure if it was purchased that way, or if my grandmother had done that.

Thanks to my reader, Felicia, for providing the following answer:

You probably know that the name for the appliqued hanky where threads are missing is called "drawn work".  It is achieved by embroidering the edge where the threads will be drawn, this must be done at the other end as well and then the threads are cut and pulled.  The next step is to use a special stitch to bundle the little groups of threads on both sides.  Depending on the technique You end up having the bundles as in your hanky, others will end up looking like a zig zag.

The squares are created when the threads drawn criss-cross previously drawn threads.  It does help to count ahead of time the threads so You end up with an  even number of threads in each group.

Thanks, Felicia. I think I understand. It's interesting.

So I told you I wanted to get started on my Happy Campers quilt, and this afternoon I did the applique for the first two blocks. Here's the original:

Here's mine:

Some of the details will be filled in with thread when I do the top-stitching. I'm going to use a dark thread to top-stitch all the pieces and fill in the missing details.

Here's the other one I did. This is the original:

And here's mine:

I'll be stitching in the "power poles" in the background, the rope holding the flag banner, and the details on the camper. Tomorrow I'm hoping to get the remaining two blocks done.

And now we're going to watch a movie I've wanted to see for a long time: Beasts of the Southern Wild. I hope you have a lovely evening planned for yourself as well.