Green Thumb Sunday - Mum and canna

Where did I have my mind ??? Of course it is not a canna but a yucca. Sorry for this mistake!!!
Anyway, thank you all for your kind comments!
Have a great day.

I was waiting for the sun to shine, but instead there are some clouds. They give an autumn feeling to the garden.
In spite of the rain, the yucca is starting to bloom:

And the mum is in full bloom, right in time!




JoinGardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Workshop with Odile Texier

Odile Texier is a French textile artist, whom I've discovered yesterday during a workshop at the patch shop. You can see more of her at http://www.cuerspatchwork.com/reportages/lyon2006/07/index.htm
She is a very nice lady, eager to share her experience. Yesterday, her aim was to introduce us to her techniques, to challenge us but not to change us (I appreciate that a lot).

The main idea of the workshop was that you don't choose a material. You are chosen by the material. Once a material has "called" you, you have to find other materials and embellishements to go with it. Odile does not use a sketchbook or drawing. Instead, she has collected a lot of fabrics, threads and odd bits and get her inspiration from her stash.

The first thing we did, was to take out the materials we had brought, hers included. Then we were given a sqare of background fabric (black or white, it was up to us). As soon as a material had imposed itself to us, we went through all the materials available in the room and took whatever we needed.
This is Odile talking (with the red jacket) and you can see examples of our stashes.
Between Odile and the lady in grey, you can have a glimpse to one of Odile's work.

We spent the rest of the morning preparing the basis of our piece. Here are the six pieces at lunch time. Mine is the green one, and my first material was a vegetable net that is only fixed with pins on this view.
We had our lunch in the shop, from the dishes (and wines) brought by the students. It was delicious and fun. The students of this patch shop are known to like their food and wines...

In the afternoon, we started embellishing with threads. Once again, the idea was to let the threads impose themselves to us. Odile had brought a huge amounts of thread, and it was a pleasure to select some of them.

All through the day, Odile has answered all our questions, with one exception: "Do you think this fabric or this thread is better than this one?". It was part of her challenging but not changing conceipt. We had to decide what we like or not ourselves, in order to express ourselves and not to produce an imitation of her work. She watched us, came to help whenever needed but never to influence us. I mean, she would explain how to sew a speciality thread, but she would not tell us where to place it. If we wanted some kind of thread, she would help find it in her stash, but she would not tell us to use a given thread at a given place, etc...

The day went by at full speed. It was exhausting too because we have worked with our soul. We have to finish our piece, I'll try to finish the embelllishement today, but I have to purchase some black fabric to finish the piece, probably on Tuesday.

Rain

Not much to say, except that it is raining! First time in 6 months. I hope it will last more than a couple of minutes.

The birds too are happy. I can hear them singing in the fig tree, where the feeders are.
But not everybody enjoys the good news, thought...
At least, this one went outside, the other one takes me to each window and door and asks me to open it to check if it is raining there too...

Misc.

Nikkipolani, I hope you are allright. And that other people dealing with the wildfires are allright too. I've been thinking of them a lot today. It is really scary.

Thanks to Allison, JoWynn, Jody, Henny, Kylee, Lisa and Sara. My talent is not that much involved, I am just following a pattern taken from Pieced Vegetables by Ruth B. McDowell.
And it will be a wall hanging for one of my daughters. Don't know yet which one...

Thank you Annica, Aiyana, Wurzel, CG and Genny for your kind comments on my artichoke. I like it too and it was fun to sew.
Thank you Mark and Genny for visiting the Pampa grass and leaving a comment.
Have a great week all!

Sewing Vegetables

Here is the vegetable of the week, the artichoke.

Green Thumb Sunday

As I came home Friday night, the garden was craving for some water. Usually, September and October bring some rain, but this year they have not. And the wind has been blowing since Thursday, making the drought even worse.

And on Satturday, the temperatures dropped a lot, showing clearly that Autumn is setting in.

I've emptied some containers whose flowers were not longer blooming and brought some inside.

It was a bit depressing, drought, wind, cold and no more flowers.

By luck this one is still glorious. The picture was taken a couples of day ago. It is in the front garden. The house you see is that of my neighbor.

Cortaderia selloana

Green Thumb Sunday

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PS: For me, it is a Pampa grass, but I was not sure that it was the same in English. Aiyana from Water When Dry gave me the answer in the comment she left: it is a Pampa grass. Thank you Aiyana!








Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Misc.

Diane and Angelcat, thanks for commenting. I went to our patch meeting yesterday, and all the ladies were eager to see the lettuce, they were sure it would not look good, because there is so much green in it (understand me, they did not question my skills, but they gave the lettuce a try too, and found the result boring). I was rather proud of myself to show the result :-) They had forgotten my attraction to bright colors, and I think those bright patches bring some interest. And this way they did not see that I had to fight with the seams :-)

For those interested, I have added my email under Contact me at the top of the page. Just can't figure how to put it on the side, not in the middle. By the way, Mary-Anne, I could not find your email ...
Thank you Mary-Anne and Annica!
Snappy and Wurzel, my canna is in pot right now, but I plan to put it in the soil next spring, and to add some, preferably with a red or a variegated foliage.
Snappy, I'm a bit sad we lost, but that's life. What I miss is the joy of the people after a victory. I'm not interested in ball plays in general, but I was having dinner out the night we became soccer champions (I agree, ages ago), and it was very touching to see the reaction of all the people in town. This happens again before and after the matches right now, and it would have been fun if ...
Zquilts, I'm in the part of France where it never rains (almost) :-) That helps to have a beautiful autumn, but that kills the plants in summer. And I felt guilty the three years before this, for not doing much in the garden. The blog community is a great help in that respect, very incentive :-)
To all, it is the first time I see a mantis like this one. Once again, seeing your beautiful pictures of wildlife made me more attentive.
It is funny, I blog in English, not in French, and I have the opportunity to speak German too, I'm too lucky!

Have a good evening all!