A new landscape quilt wall hanging

I am starting a new landscape quilt. This one will be an old picket fence, inspired by the one in Nancy Zeiman and Natalie Sewell's book.

I began with a batik cotton from Quilter's Curve in Combermere, Ontario. It is a light teal background with swirls through it. They could easily come across as shafts of sunlight in the finished wallhanging.

I then cut pieces of a grey mottled batik for the fence posts, but they just didn't seem right. So I went with a clear white cotton shirting fabric that I had, and did a lot of colouring with oil pastels, crayons and permanent markers.

This is just the start, I may add even more shading to the posts once I add more details to the quilt. It has to look like old wood, with that weathered look of mold and dirt aged by time.

There will be a lot of fussy cutting to this quilt. Lots of individual leaves and flowers to be cut, that will then be stitched over the fence to look as if they have always been there. I am so looking forward to this project.

It's so worth growing dahlias

I don't think any other flower provides such a glorious display as dahlias. Well perhaps peonies but they only last one to two weeks at most whereas dahlias bloom for almost a month. Then the frost gets them. In warmer climes, they would bloom even longer.

Dahlias in August

I planted 21 dahlia tubers, not sure how many have come up and not all have bloomed yet. A couple haven't even set buds which is disappointing. But the ones that have bloomed are stunning. I will try to list their names below the photo. All of these will be wintered over and divided, if it works out, to make even more dahlia blooms next summer.

I don't know the name of this one, but it is a lovely semi-cactus dahlia in soft pink

Linda's Baby showing up peachy coral as in the catalog

I think this one is Linda's Baby; two different colours on the same plant

I don't know the name of this one

I think this is Jowey Linda

Esli dahlia, by far the most blooms of all

Creve Couer, the tallest dahlia in deep fuchsia, this bloom is 7 inches across

Cafe au Lait dahlia in gorgeous shades of taupe and blush

Cafe au Lait, showing pale pink on the outer petals

Cafe au Lait dahlia, this one is pale yellow on the same plant

Small pompom dahlia that wintered over from last year

This week's bouquet

I figure I should cut the flowers and put them on the table where we spend most of our time, so that I can be enjoying them up close. This week's selection features giant dinner plate dahlia Creve Couer, some pompom dahlias, cosmos, phlox, echinacea, daisies, black-eyed susans, hollyhocks, balloon flowers, and the beloved funny amaranth. Favourite flower this year though is plain old echinacea, or purple coneflower.

August flowers

Snapdragons are blooming well this year

A prize dahlia, a dinner plate red, called Creve Couer, grows 3 feet tall and has large shaggy blooms

A candy pink ball dahlia, blooming profusely, I think this one is Esli

Peachy pink ball dahlia, I think this is Linda's Baby or it could be Jowey Linda

Red echinacea

Flowering tobacco, aka nicotiana, reaching over 2 feet tall in a pot

A container on the deck with reiger begonia and impatiens, a winning combination

Knitting a shawl

I wanted a project that would just be interesting knitting with no fitting issues to deal with. So I decided to make the Suncrest Shawl by Tanis.

I has one ball of silk/wool sock yarn, hand-dyed by a local artisan and it was lovely to work with. It was just too pricey to knit socks with it, so a shawl was just the right project for this yarn.

This image does not do justice to the colour; it is much more variegated and a prettier shade of green than this image shows. I had great difficulty keeping the counting straight and there are many errors. After unpicking long rows a couple of times, I thought that I would just get to the end of the row and either add or decrease stitches to get the right number at the end. It seemed to work. The lace pattern was not at all visible until I completely soaked it and spread it out to block. Now I can see the pattern and it is lovely. This will be a gift for my daughter Elena, as I am not a shawl person. However, I do enjoy knitting them and am looking at the Great British Baking Shawl as a future project. I particularly like knitting with double weight yarn, rather than worsted weight. It is just much more comfortable and it also weighs less as you knit.

Garden Overview late July

The gingko bed, full of perennials, and behind it is the tomato bed

What I call the "weigela bed", now with Annabelle hydrangea, bee balm, and soon-to-pop balloon flowers

Another shot of the "weigela bed" including the Strawberry Sunday hydrangea in the foreground

Two dahlia blossoms and red hollyhocks

Red echinacea, white phlox, fluffy pink filipendula and pale yellow hollyhocks

Another shot of the weigela bed with the coral geranium in front

The tomato bed, in which the plants are so stunted, I don't know why. Perhaps it was the early heat that was followed by cold that stunted their growth. They are producing fruit, but there are not many branches

A shot of the gingko bed, with Tekla's white butt on the left

A novelty annual grown from seed: amaranth, also known as "love lies bleeding"

A favourite of mine: purple coneflower in a bed with shasta daisies and black eye susans about to bloom

A crab apple tree with jackmanii clematis beginning to bloom as it climbs up the trunk

A shot of the sidewalk bed in front: perennial geranium blooming its heart out, two daylilies, alyssum, and bobo hydrangea which survived snowbanks and falling trees this winter

A gorgeous combination of colours in petunias grown from seed