Plugging Along

Happy Friday!

After a couple of very busy weeks, I've got little to actually show you.  No photos yet, but the corduroy quilt is all tied (finally!) and is now waiting on me getting to the hand-stitching of the binding.  Very slow progress, but still progress.

I had an idea the other day for a project that I started a while back, then lost my vision of what I was doing.  I've never shown it here, so here's a photo of where I started:

just blocks laid on a background

I had decided to work with what was left of two Scrap Bags from Cherrywood Fabrics.  I already used most of the blues, greens and purples in my "Snuggle" quilt. (You can see it here)  I just love these suede-look fabrics, and they had languished in the cupboard for far too long.  None of these pieces are bigger than 5 inch by 7 inch, so it can be challenging to come up with a project that they will work in.  I made these approximately 5 inch blocks of strata.  I also threw in some bits of hand-painted fabric from Barb's Elegant Designs for a little sparkle.  After I got this far, the project got set aside.

Then, the other day, I ran across a picture of a quilt by Odette Tolksdorf on Pinterest that reminded me of these blocks, and so I had to go do something with the idea that this sparked.  I've been working for a few days now, and finally am getting somewhere with these.

approx. 10 inch square blocks now

I need one or two more blocks (extra blocks are always good when undecided about what I'm doing) and then I'll start trying to put this together.  It doesn't look like much in the photo - it's hard to capture the true color and variations in the fabrics - but I'm excited and happy about how it's coming along. 

pin basted and ready to quilt

I've also pin basted the other baby quilt that I showed back in January. You can see it here.  (Really?  January?? Yikes! Time flies.)  I'm hoping to get it quilted this weekend, so that I have next week to do the binding.  I'd like to have it done to turn it at the guild meeting in a week.  I just need to finalize what/how I'm going to machine quilt.  I printed out some photos of the quilt in black and white and am sketching quilting designs on the photos to help me decide. Because that is much easier than ripping out something I don't like!  hee hee!

We're having a beautiful sunny spring day here, after a couple of days of lots of rain.  I finally got a chance to get out in the yard and get some photos of what's blooming.  The tulip at the top of this post is the ONLY tulip I got this year.  That darn squirrel dug up and ate all the rest of my bulbs.  I got one daffodil too (same reason), and it is disappearing a little bit every day.  I think the slugs are eating it.  Oh well, one is better than none.  They are both where I can see them every day and I'm making a point of enjoying them.  Next year I need to try something different, I think.  I'm open to suggestions!

Azalea

Forget Me Not

unfurling Hostas

Sweet Violets

Have a great weekend and I hope you have time to do some stitching this weekend!

"Tiptoe. . .

through the tulips" - that's just what we did on Wednesday this week. We drove up to Skagit county to see all the tulips, meeting most of the rest of our family for the tour. The day was cold and blustery, but not uncomfortable. We never actually got rained on until the end, and that was about 10 drops!

We walked the circumference of this field. It was all one field of tulips - probably millions of tulips! What a wonderful sight. It took us about an hour to walk around it, but that was taking lots of photos.

We had lunch at a nice little cafe with great sandwiches, then we went to an art show by local artists that was in a barn (not the one pictured!). I found a watercolor that just had to come home with me.

I was really impressed by how beautiful the sky was that day. I could see why all the artists had to paint it. It really reminded me of a European sky - it looked like the sky in the old Masters' oil paintings. So much so that it didn't look real - it looked painted. I hope my photos will help you see what I mean.

Then we went off on a little drive and ended up on Camano Island. DH had to go see the water - he misses the ocean. Well, we saw the Sound but it was close enough.

I'll leave you to enjoy the photos and, as always, click on the small picture to see it bigger.