Hanging with Ann, Sylvia and Jane

Hey kids - I figured that I should make a blog post before another month ends.  Who knows, I might be able to squeeze in another one before the end of the month.  Although that's probably a lofty idea with the way I've been blogging lately.

I've been furiously working on one thing and another, and not a lot of results in any of them.  I'm still mired in the over-one land of Ann Smith.  Oh, how I love this sampler, but oh, how I hate me those over ones!!!  Well, I guess I don't really hate them as I love the results, I just hate that it takes so much time to do and leaves me each evening with eyes that don't want to focus for a hour or so.

Adam and Eve are finally in!  What a relief!  After that point, things went downhill quickly as far as stitching time.  I only stitch at night and had my son home for a week on his Spring break, so things were a little hectic.  Add to that the fact that frogs visited a couple nights to reek havoc in the Garden, and I didn't get too much further:

I've had a bit of  trouble with the leaves on the right-hand tree.  So much so that a couple nights were lost as far as stitching goes - lots of frogging.  And I kept making mistakes, wised up and just fudged the whole thing.  I want this over one section done so that I can move forward.  Stitching over two is going to feel like I'm stitching on 14 count Aida after all this over one stuff!  But the end is in sight - maybe another week?

When not hanging with Ann, I've been hanging with Sylvia and Jane.  Those two girls have a few tricks up their sleeves also.

Now when you look at these Sylvia blocks, please don't look close (of course, with me saying that you're all going to clicking away like crazy to get the picture to enlarge, so please ignore threads).  Whether you enlarge the picture or not, put your hand over the one on the bottom right.  That block was like some kind of unruly kid and it's going to be done over.  It involved a lot of Y-seams which I'm not knowledgeable about at all.  I did use Y-seams on the flower basket block next to it without too much of a hitch, but what happened with that one on the right is only one's guess.  Could help if I went out into the land of YouTube before I tried to put the block together.  Okay, that would be too easy and so I just went for it.    That was a mistake and I ended up going into YouTube after and then it all became crystal clear.  Still doesn't explain why the flower block came out fine (whatever!!).  I guess I'm like a guy whose lost that won't ask directions sometimes.  Or I get a smart-assed attitude and think that I can do it, and prove myself really wrong!  LOL

Then because I love to give myself headaches (not really) we decided to have a visit with Jane.  She's another ornery one too:

Four blocks and two rectangles.  Some blocks I'm just sewing, others I'm using foundation paper for them.  Or actually tracing paper.  Makes it so much easier to see your guidelines through the back side of the paper.  Those rectangles practically left me with a bald spot on the side of my head!  Fiddly little things, but I'm bound and determined to make this quilt.  I've only been sitting on the fabrics for this quilt for ten years.  It was a BOM and each month I have five blocks and one or two border triangles to do.  As much as it gives me long moments of pause trying to figure out what I'm doing and then making sure that I'm doing it right (or wrong and it still looks good - I'm not picky here), I am really excited to be working on this quilt.  I still have another block to do, but it's applique and I haven't sat down with it to sew it together.  One thing that I found with some of these fabrics -  there are fabrics out on the current market that are just like these fabrics that I received 10+ years ago only in different colors.  I was kind of stunned by that, but I guess that what they about everything that goes around, comes around is true - at least in this case.

After that I decided that I needed a break and just make something easy and fun.  I spied these kits at a quilt store not long ago and picked them up.  I sit on a pillow when I stitch and I thought that these would make the perfect covers for the pillow:

While the kits came with instructions, I found it much easier to do them following a video that I discovered on Pinterest (yep, finally got the clue about the benefits of videos).  I think it took an hour to knock out both of these!!

And last, but not least, I don't do the TUSAL, but the threads were piling up in the ORT basket, so it was time to dump them again.

That's a lot of thread.  But just in time for Spring.  I like to put this out on one of our bushes and let the birds make their nests out of them (no metallics in this pile).  Of course, that is if the birds start making their nests.  We're still in a deep freeze here in Michigan with no end in sight.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it warms up soon!!

So that's it for me!!  Thanks for stopping and paying me a visit.  I love receiving your comments!!  Hope that it's warmer in your part of the world and that you get lots of stitching time in!!