Snail Spirals

I had an extremely productive fibery weekend! I've been gathering the things I want to enter in the County Fair, and came across several mostly-finished projects from last fall that could go in. First, I found this piece of hardanger.



This is a mini-sampler I designed, with inspiration from Janice Love's Fundamentals Made Fancy book, to showcase greek crosses, dovecotes, picots and filet stitches. I sewed green velvet along both long edges, and inserted it into the lid of a box. Pretty, I think!



I also found a small ornament that only needed to have the eyelets around the edges done. So I finished the eyelets and sewed it into a small stuffed ornament, complete with twisted cording that I also made Saturday.



While I was looking through the hardanger pile, I found a piece that I did without really knowing what it was going to end up as. I had no idea how I was going to finish it. It's about 10" square, so I decided to hemstitch around all four sides and make it a doily. It takes a loooong time to hemstitch over two threads all the way around a 10" square on 28-count linen! I used my rotary cutter to trim the fringe, and it came out great.



I also came across some fabric I got last time I was off-island, to make a dress for Emma. I was initially only going to get a 1/2 yard, just enough for the dress, but the print is so cute and it was on sale, soI ended up getting the rest of the bolt! I have 4 1/2 yards of this now, and will put most of it into a quilt, whenever I get around to it. Emma loves the little ladybugs.



I took 1/2 yard of it last night and made it into the skirt of this dress. I also crocheted the yoke yesterday afternoon, so except for stitching the hem (which is pressed and ready to go), this is a complete dress-in-a-day!



And lest you think that Emma and I spent all weekend holed up in the house, we went here yesterday:



This is one of the fields at Pelindaba Lavender Farm. They had their annual Lavender Festival this weekend, and Emma and I went over to stroll through the acres of lavender. It was glorious. There is no way to describe what it's like to be in the middle of a sea of lavender with butterflies everywhere and bees humming, and a warm breeze wafting a fragrance so strong it's like breathing lavender syrup.