Butterflies and Wool

First the butterflies . . .

. . . my May Bunny Hill block is done (except for a bit of embroidery).

And yes, I did say butterflIES . . . not butterflY - I included one as a fussy-cut on the corner of the basket. It looks pretty good I thought - nice to stumble on those little surprises every so often!

My final package from The Quilt Patch was waiting for me when I got back from holidays.

First things first, the wool had to be washed in hot, hot water. So into the sink all the like-colors went with the hottest water in the tap . . . then lots of swishing and swirling that wool around . . . not sure how long you are supposed to do this, but I do it for about 10 minutes or so.

This batch of wool had some color-bleeding issues, so they got a couple of extra rinses with one rinse including a bit of vinegar added in and then rinsed some more until the water was pretty clear.

A quick little wring-out by hand and then I grabbed an old towel and rolled the pieces in it to remove a bit more water.

Then they all got thrown into the hot dryer . . .

. . . for quite a while (until dry).

So now here are the wool pieces that are going to be used to finish the borders of my Summer Baskets 3 block of the month.

All my tracing and ironing are behind me and now the fun part of cutting out all the pieces. Maybe I'll be able to work on laying it all out and start some sewing next week sometime.

We're off to Winnipeg this weekend . . . so there will be no sewing going on here. I will be posting more vacation and quilt shop tour pictures soon . . . so stay tuned.

'til next time,

M.