Thursday, June 19, 2014

Roses are Blooming + New Rose + Diamonds Fabric

Summer is in full bloom. When you walk out our farmhouse door, the smell of roses hits you hard.


The scent of roses sounds like a lovely experience and it is. It is actually quite stunning. Unfortunately these roses are the multiflora roses native to Asia that the US Soil Conservation promoted in the 1930's for erosion control and live fences. Unfortunately, these roses are definitely one of the most invasive plant species and the bane of any livestock farmer. 

 

Our sheep will eat their lower leaves, even though they are very thorny, but these huge shrubs keep thriving. You can see them climbing through trees and many old pastures are no longer pastures but thorny nightmares for landowners or anyone wanting to walk through them. The Farmer sometimes runs his brush hog over them but they just keep coming back. In the fall, when they are covered with rosehips, the birds feast on them and spread the seeds far and wide.

A local hillside covered in multi-flora roses
But onto garden roses. I don't grow roses in my garden because I hate dealing with the thorns when I am gardening. I love to look at them and appreciate them. 


Yesterday I went for a drive with Julia and snapped these photos of other people's roses.....


........ all to introduce you to my new fabric design - Roses and Diamonds. This design is available in four colorways and you can purchase it through my shop on the Spoonflower website. There are several different fabrics available including a linen/cotton canvas. I had test swatches made in the linen/cotton because I plan to cover a chair in the fabric (someday!) and I wanted to see which colorway would be best in our kitchen. 


There is a light blue colorway, a rust colorway, a chartreuse colorway and a gold colorway. Which do you like best? 

11 comments:

Michele in Maine said...

Love all the fabrics - how exciting! I'm especially partial to the rust (orange) version.

I share your dread of the rosa rugosa - - I have to stamp it out of my garden all the time.

Sally said...

Gold! Lovely, Kristin!

Anonymous said...

I also love the rust!

Lesa

Unknown said...

No roses here just some vines I have spent the last 15 years to get rid of without much success. I have to add my vote to the rust.

Louise CF said...

I love the chartreuse!

jennifer.auroradesign said...

Love them all but I find myself really drawn to the gold colorway. I recently picked up a vintage Indian bedspread and the colors are quite similar. (The spread is at least 50 years old.) Nice work!

Anonymous said...

the blue......

Fracksmom

Anonymous said...

Love the rust. Colors seem to pop more here.

We are guilty of planting a mutiflora fence around property of our first home 54 years ago in Ky.
We've moved on twice since then. No more roses of any kind.
Brevard NC

Claire said...

We don't have that particular problem with roses here in the UK although we do have a massive problem with Japanese Knotweed, which is so bad, the law actually states that it has to be pulled out by the roots and burned on site.

I love all of your swatches but particularly the green and pink colourway.

Anonymous said...

I'm no help to you at all: I love every one of these colorways. A set of wooden kitchen chairs, each with a pad of a different colorway, would be charming (if the scale of the print is appropriate for the size of the chair seats, of course).
-- stashdragon

Lizy Tish said...

LOVE the light blue and the chartreuse! So pretty.

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