Summer Blues Lavender Hearts

I love going to Cape Cod each summer to replenish my supply of dried lavender buds....

                                                              

"The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herb,

 and fields of lavender,
With the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows..."

                                                                    wm cullen bryant



There is the delightful Cape Cod Lavender Farm in Harwich, recenly featured in the June issue of Victoria magazine. It's so fun to see a familiar beautiful place in a gorgeous colorful magazine spead.

And I also stock up on wholesale dried lavender from The Atlantic Spice Company, in Truro, up near the flea market.

This past week I gathered my blues: vintage linens, homespuns, quilt scraps and cherished bits of early indigo calico...

and cut and sewed dozens of hearts which I then lugged out to the beach to stuff and stitch closed.

As I hid from the scorching 90* heat under our new beach umbrella, my daughter looked on and finally asked me if I sew the hearts at the beach so that they will have the scent not only of Cape Cod lavender but of sea salt air and sunshine and hot sand. What a lovely image, I thought.

Even though I really do so because it is a messy job and the overflow of lavender buds falls harmlessy into the sand instead of on my carpets or deck planks.

And busy hands make the long summer afternoons feel so much more productive.

I also made a group of white hearts, using vintage white and ecru linens and embroideries and tiny bits of antique lace. These are sold but I take orders if anyone would like the white Moonlight hearts....

The hearts in the photos are not finished...but they will be ready soon. See them in my etsy shop and on ebay, hopefully by late next week....

enjoy!


  love

                 lizzy

                  ....gone to the beach