First Couple for Août

All twelve of my monthly samplers from Bonheur des Dames feature this young, enraptured couple in the centre:

Here they are dressed for the country in August. This time around I have decided to finish each motif completely before starting the next. When I did the Juin sampler I got stuck with all the tiny backstitching at the end, which was quite a chore. But it's not so bad in small doses!

Not much to show, I know, but even this minute little finish is heartening these days. I've had so many distractions!

Hourglasses Before & After

I know it's been a month since I've posted any actual sewing, but I'm in the long, same middle parts of a lot of projects, so there's nothing really new to show. The past few days, though, I've been making strides on my hourglasses quilt.

It's been great for using up all those 5" square freebies I've picked up here and there. The blue and the green fabric above were favours from the Trenton Quilt Guild's show last year. The light fabrics are both more of my infamous Rite Aid fabrics.

My quilt guild Rouge Valley has just firmed up it's next quilt show date for early April 2014. So the pressure's on! Maybe my show quilt will be Riviera Star, or maybe it will be this one, the hourglasses. I think this could be a fun show quilt, for reasons not yet revealed, lol.

You may recall that the main purpose of this quilt was to use up the many, many dubious fabrics that I've accumulated over the years. All the following photos feature one brown Asian-style "faux patchwork" fabric, which is so hard to use. It was interesting to see what happened to it during piecing:

Not bad! Here's a higher contrast piece:

Also better than expected, I thought. The last one was rather serendipitous:

I like the way that wheel came out, although I'm pretty sure the top will be cropped off when I trim the blocks. Anyway, it's fun to see the new patterns emerge. There's still a long way to go!

Panda Diplomacy

Our Prime Minister Stephen Harper was at the airport today to greet the giant pandas that are beginning their visit from China. He is taking some heat in the press, because, you know, he has other important stuff going on. But the pandas are an important diplomatic token these days, so it is beneficial to our relationship with China to treat them well. It is certainly better than selling China all our future oil production... oops, too late!

All right, I'm off my soap box, because really I just wanted a chance to dust off my photos from the pandas' last visit in 1985. Are the pandas an exciting zoo exhibit? Judge for yourself:

I recall that there was quite a while between each of these photos. I think the series says it all. :)

Hopefully I'll be sewing again soon!