Garden inspiration

Man, oh, man. The weather in my corner of the world has been beautiful lately. There has even been reported sightings of the S-U-N!!! (Well, o.k., not this last weekend - but before that!) It's also been time to get my veggie garden going. So I've been out weeding, and tilling, and weeding, and raking, and weeding, and planting....know what I mean?

All of this outdoor stuff cuts into my sewing time a little bit but that's o.k. It's also a great time to get some inspiration from the garden and use it on some smaller, more manageable projects. Especially scrappy ones!

I had a simple log cabin table runner in mind. What's not to love about the log cabin block? It's the queen bee of scrap thriftiness. Here are some of the scraps I pulled out - all 1-1/2" strips:

Can green and red be your main colors and not look like a Christmas project? I think so, but I think the key is the ratio of each. If you have equal amount of red and green, you might as well put a ribbon on it and put it under the tree. My plan is to use about 90% greens and white/lights with about a 10% accent of reds. Just about as much as you see in the picture. We'll see how it turns out!

Next, I'm adding some fussy cut 4" squares from a fabric featuring seed packets I had leftover from a different project:

(This fabric was so cool. It's an older fabric from a line called Annie's Farm House by Holly Holderman of Lakehouse Dry Goods. I bought and used it for some placemats I made for my mom a couple of years ago. The seed packets in the print feature the Card Seed Co. that was located in Fredonia, N.Y. - very near the little town my mom grew up in. If you click on the picture above, it should enlarge so you can see the print better.) Just for fun, check this out...

Anyway, back to the blocks! I'm using the fussy cut 4" squares as the center of my log cabin blocks and using the strips on light and dark sides, ending with white so it seems a bit more "summery". (Is that really a word?) I went out 3 logs on each side so I finished with a 10" block.

My plan is to make 8 blocks and try some different layouts but I should end up with a 20"x 40" runner for my oval kitchen table. I'll be back soon with some layout options!

Happy summer stitching,

Tonya