A Day with Layers

It was a fun day yesterday - a field trip with my Layers group to Longwood Gardens - so inspiring - every flower gives you new quilting ideas. I'll admit, I don't know the name of all of these beautiful flowers, sorry. I've grown this in my flower garden in the past - love the spooned petals. Welcome spring! Ahhh, isn't nature perfect!

We were greeted by an amazing show of delphiniums - they are so majestic.

I tried for years to grow delphiniums in my flower beds, but I've had no luck with them - finally gave up. Very few flowers have the variety of blues that this plant offers up.

The buds are so architectural - as interesting as the flowers.

There were many flowers at the gardens, but the day was all about orchids - this is the final week of the orchid exhibit. Look at this beautiful cascading orchid in the conservatory.

For lack of a better name - orchid specimen A - the contrast of the buttery yellow with the plum is delicious, add the ruffle to fancy things up.

Orchid specimen B - tangerine and magenta - every orchid is so different.

Orchid specimen C - pink on parade - so feminine. I have are so many more photos - I'll share a few more later this week.

After the trip to Longwood we met at Terry's for show and tell. My friend Kelly talked me into purchasing pinch purse hardware at the Lancaster AQS Quilt Show last week - it was our goal to have one for S&T - mine is the one on the left, Kelly's on the right. Check out the Pink Penguin for directions. I added a ribbon tab using the knitting ribbon I purchased at the show.

Kelly's fabric selection has a lot of contrast - love it! BTW - I'm trying to talk Kelly into starting her own blog - she has such great ideas - encourage her please.

I used a vintage home dec fabric as my main fabric and an old Lonni Rossi Typo fabric as my contrasting fabric. Here you can see inside of mine - the opening is 4 inches (the pattern calls for a 5 inch pinch purse hardware - ours was only 4), and the length is 5 inches.

Already found a home for mine - I'm using it to stow my knitting notions in my knitting bag - it fits my scissors, needle container, row counter and my Pinocchio tape measure perfectly. How do you like the knitting bag - it's an Amy Butler pattern - the Madison Bag. I used a piece of my vintage barkcloth to make the bag - confession - I collect vintage barkcloth, can't stop myself. And yes, that's a brooch from my husband's Great Aunt Amy adorning the front of the bag.

OMG - this is my friend Christine - her S&T included a spoof on my method for containing my binding as I iron it - if you remember, I use my spray starch container and roll the binding onto it as I iron it. Spoof or not Christine - I think your method has a lot of merit, despite how ridiculous it, and you, looks. She's wound it around a paper roll and made a necklace out of it - - - I really think this would work great - opinions???