spring

every season in our house has been great, but now that i've spent the beginnings of a spring in our home, it is by far my favorite. i planted over 200 bulbs in the fall which are starting to come up. i blame it on martha, and me reading her mag/blog/show and thinking that when she says that she planted hundreds of bulbs, it wasn't actually by her, it was her gardeners. but anyway, it was worth it!

spring has been great to see everything that is coming up and plants are popping up that i didn't even realize we had. like this tree below, i'm not even sure what it is, but it's beautiful. and peonies. and forsythia. 

 here are some of the many bulbs i planted.

 and the gardens have hellebores, which i have always wanted.

 they work great to use indoors and they seem to last for around at least 2 weeks.

i find that it's easier to keep plants alive in this house, because it gets such great light. although i have still managed to kill a few.

 i used this area to plant seedlings, which i hope make it. they are 'hardening off' outside.

 i bought this fern that i put in my sewing room, but it's not doing so hot so i should probably move it.

 and the japanese maple is starting to bud and it looks amazing.

moz is still loving the house. but you see that boxwood below? dead. one of my failures. and i kept it alive for years at our old house! but i sort of forgot to water it all winter. oops.

and i've become obsessed with gardening/plants/outdoors lately. i am usually spending my time pinteresting the garden board, or buying plants, or planning outside, or planting outside. let's hope i keep everything alive!

my lovely mom bought me the combination below.

i saw this euphorbia blackbird below (right) and added it with some caramel heuchera and boulder blue fescua, along with creeping jenny and i think it looks great!! how cool is euphorbia? i never noticed it around before, but now i'm obsessed. the black planter i picked up at a moving sale around here and the brown pot from lowe's.

how is your spring? what are you planting?

our finished quilt

at the end of last year i started a quilt for us. taking inspiration from the gee's bend quilts, it was made with our old shirts and pants. since i didn't have enough discarded clothing for the entire thing, i did incorporate some new fabrics in order to make it big enough for our queen size bed. 

the front patchwork was made with some of our old shirts and khakis. 

since the front was very dark and wintry, i made the back with lighter color fabrics so that it would work better for the warmer months.

here's a little peak of our bedroom. 

and the giant dining room table came in handy while working on this giant quilt. at the bottom of this pic you can also see some other re purposed fabric i used for the back, a duvet cover.

and the living room had just enough space to baste this beast. i just had to move some furniture out of the way.

i saved a couple of pockets to add a little something unexpected to the quilt.

i really like how it turned out! although the navy fabric i used for the front seems to attract every miscellaneous dust particle and speck of fabric, which is very annoying. 

quiltcon in austin

several weeks ago i had the pleasure to attend the first quiltcon in austin, texas. i was so happy when i heard about it, because i am usually one to find out about things too late and miss out. and it sounded right up my alley and was also in a city that i have really wanted to visit. austin did not disappoint! i talked dave into going, but only if we could get other friends to go so we did!

austin if packed with food trucks and i think we eat at them most of the time. it's great to be able to get really good food, for really cheap from a truck!

 the cowboy boot selection did not disappoint and i wish i would have bought a pair, but they were $$$.

on friday i took a improvisational piecing class with denyse schmidt and it was awesome! she is the person who got me interested in quilting. i saw her quilts on a blog years ago and thought, i want to do that! in the class you have to blindly pull fabric out of bags and sew it together. it's actually thrilling not knowing what fabric you will be forced to use and made for some very cool color combinations that i would have never dreamed up on  my own.

this was my little work station. i made that sewing kit right  before i left and intended to blog about, but never did. story of my life :-)

for the last portion of the class we had to incorporate some of our own fabric into the random fabric that we pulled out of bags. this is how my quilt blocks came out. i want to make something with them soon!

and i totally lucked out after being a dummy and leaving my blocks in the class. i remember gathering  all my blocks, but somehow forgot them. i realized it when i met my friends at a bar later and went to pull them out to show them and they were not in my bag! luckily they were in the lost n found the next morning. THANK YOU to whoever found them and turned them in!

they had a quilt show as well. there were so many amazing quilts. i wish i had all the info on these, but here are some of my faves. 

i really need to hand quilt something one of these days. i just don't have the patience for it. 

i also took a class with lotta jansdotter on printing. we made some print blocks and printed on paper and fabric. 

 

we walked and walked into many bars to find this particular food truck. i forget what it was though, dave was in charge of the food search. the food truck scene is so awesome there. most of the bars have one and you can order food from them. i also noticed that most bars also have a "yard," which rules. 

my travel mates in quite possibly the best picture ever. 

as soon as we left we knew we will definitely be going back to austin again sometime. and next time we will wait in that stupid long line at franklins to get some of their great bbq.