Challenging Progress

Here is my challenge this year. We had to pick an unmarked envelope to determine which crayon we would get, and I ended up with "Purple Mountain's Majesty". (I don't know if you'll be able to actually tell from this photo what this color looks like, unless you have box of 48 crayons!) I'm one of the few that isn't complaining about her color! We have to match the color that the crayon colors, not the wrapper. This has been a challenge as this is a blue-ish purple, and hard to match. But I did finally find something. The other challenge was deciding on a pattern. I started with 11 choices! I finally narrowed it down to just one - whew!

Another challenge has been actually getting started on it, what with my hand "issues" and all. But I am finally making some progress.

This photo shows where I was last week. I was happily sewing away, even though it was 90 degrees. Both cats felt that I needed supervision - either that, or they were just bored and I was the most interesting thing they could find to watch right then. Dunkel was sitting in the window, until he found a spider. It crawled down onto the sewing desk, and he followed, trying to catch it. No luck with that, so then he decided that it was more comfy laying on my fabric pieces than laying on the window sill. Or maybe the fan was blowing on him.

I imagine most quilters that have cats have also had the challenge of sewing with kitty behind on their fabric! Dunkel can be quite stubborn, like most cats. But we finally worked it out.

This is what I had yesterday. So far I have 14 stars done, but one of those won't work. (It doesn't have enough contrast, so it will go into the Parts Department or on the back.) So, I need another 5 stars. Then I get to do the alternate squares, and I haven't even decided what to do with a border yet.

Now, you can't tell from this picture, but these stars are 4 inches! Yikes, I knew they'd be small, but I didn't quite understand just how small those pieces would be. The corner squares finish at 1 inch. I'm beginning to wonder what possessed me to do this pattern! Oh well, it's supposed to be a challenge, right? Right?? This is due mid-July, so I have a little time. I just don't want to be rushing at the last minute. You never know what's going to come up in the meantime. And I'm trying very hard to not distract myself with all the other ideas I can come up with without even trying.

Here is one of the finished quilts for the Australian bushfires victims. I found two of my donated blocks in this. They are 2nd from the right on the top row, and the middle star in the 2nd row down. Yay! Thanks to Comic Book Lady who had this on her blog, because her blocks are in here too. Otherwise I might not have seen it.

I went to Camp Follower Bags' blog to see what was up with the Bushfire Quilt Project. Tia has 97 quilts ready to ship! Wow, that is impressive. What a ton of work she has done.

My DH found this great video on You Tube of the Sony Rolly. This is a blast to watch! I'd love to have one, just to play with, but I understand that it's only available in Japan and costs around $350 USD. Here is another link so you can see the Synchronized Rollys. Silliness, but fun to watch!

And, in closing, here is Shade in "supervisor mode". He's holding down my challenge project fabric for me.