Summer & home

I’m staying at my parents’ house in Budapest with E and Z, now through August 6. So fun to be here. It’s the nicest time of year in this part of the world: not too hot, everything lovely green and often still blooming. My sisters are around, my brother gets home in two weeks, A goes back to New York to work a bit but then will come for an almost-three-week full-on vacation! Yay!

This country is troubled by all the usual politics and then some, but I want to share some of the things I love here, things that are really, really beautiful. So I will try to blog about that in the next couple months, especially because I’m working on some things for my business, to be revealed in September! Friends, I hope so much that you will find them as beautiful as I do.

In the meantime – I started working on some needle-turn applique, inspired by a guildmate who did an impromptu demonstration of her technique at the last NYC Metro Mod Quilt Guild meeting. Kim’s blocks are amazing, and the way she explained how she makes them was just so inviting that I couldn’t resist… So I drafted a rose inspired by the Hungarian embroidery I’ve been working with and got started on the applique on our last night in New York (anything to avoid packing, of course!):

Since then I’ve made a bit of progress, the edges are smoother but my points? Still not that pointy:

You can kind of see the colors I’m inspired by:

These are the kinds of flowers you can buy around farmers’ markets in Budapest this time of year.

And then, embroidered lovely things, spotted around town – a purse with a tulip motif:

Or a scarf with wildly colored embroidery form the same region (Mezokovesd) as my applique rose:

I bought this scarf. How could I not?