New Challenge - New Hope

This morning a tremendous crack of thunder made me sit straight up in bed. We enjoyed an hour of a good soaking along with Mother Nature's fireworks display. I can't remember the last time there was such brilliant lightening! The morning was cloudy and dim, but I decided to try and get a few pictures to blog about anyways.

Last evening I clipped off 6 nice full roses and put them in a bowl of water to bring in the house. They smell so wonderful. Tiny things but very potent. This morning I decided the bouquet needed one more blossom to make it a full circle, so I ran out and snipped another one. Can you find it? Hint.. it is covered with raindrops.

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So now let me tell you about a fun new project. My friend Ulla from kotkarankki and I have been chatting lately about quilts and flowers and things we love in common.. and she thought we might have fun with a summer challenge. Now Ulla is the Queen of Recycling, and we can all learn a lot from her. She does magical things with used clothing and scraps of things you might never think of as useful. I was so excited when I saw how cleverly she used some old shirts to make the cutest shopping bags. See them here. I kind of stole her idea of the shirts to use in a new quilt I want to try and make. Our actual "challenge" is to make a quilt from our stash or things we have on hand.. not buy anything new.. and have it done by August. Here is the start of mine..

Not exactly sure where it's going yet, but once I get working on it we'll see. I'm quite certain I won't have to buy a thing.. there is enough stuff here to make many quilts. But my real challenge is going to be this..
Finishing these little white dolly underpinnings and aprons. I need to get them done and in the mail BEFORE I do one more minute of anything else. These are for someone else, not for me.. and I am simply taking forever. :(

The fabric really is lovely.. very fine batiste and vintage windowpane organdy.. and I love making tatted lace. But for some reason I'm having such a hard time keeping at working on them. So maybe if I have these pretty fabrics sitting here in front of me and don't let myself touch them beforehand.. I can get my work done.

And on a final note... HOPE for my DAISIES! You can see where I chopped all the flowers off, and this plant seriously looked very dead. But here this morning... a new bud. I am so happy.

And the sun is now shining. So I'm going to turn on a fan, put some music on and get to work. Hope you all have a lovely day.