Monday, Monday

It's a sunny but cold day here on my red dirt road. We got some of our tomato plants, herbs and flowers over the weekend but they won't be planted for a few days since we are having freezing at night. Our rule of thumb is not to plant until after Easter. I just can't wait to get my hands in the dirt!

Last week was not very productive since I was a bit under the weather but I did get two more blocks of the 1998 BOM finished.




I love the Grandmother's Flower Garden block in any form. It was one of my own grandmother's favorite patterns and, since she had a big flower garden in the middle of her backyard, I grew up thinking that block was named for her (and I still think of her garden whenever I see that quilt block.) I have an ongoing hand-work project of paper piecing Grandmother's Flower Garden blocks.

I'm hoping to finish some a couple of UFO's this week. This is also a time to thank about the events of Jesus' last week on earth and the wonderful blessing of Easter Sunday. Wishing you and yours a happy and holy week,

Random Thoughts

The past several weeks have been busy but not very productive. Maybe the unpredictable weather was part of my problem. We had beautiful, warm days with sunshine and gentle breezes and cold days with high winds. This weekend saw the north and western parts of the state with record snowfall. We had severe thunderstorms, rain, sleet and snow...all in 24 hours...and today was warm and sunny again. I'm really ready for spring!!! I'm ready to buy vegetable plants and flowers and the sweet potato vines for the big flowerpots on the decks. Hurry springtime!!

Our local quilt guild's email newsletter is featuring a 3-part mystery quilt pattern. I've never done a mystery quilt but this sounded fun. I have the first part finished. I decided to use fabrics from my stash and here's what I ended up with.

I love the little chicks on the green fabric! I need to get another piece of red fabric for the next part of the mystery.

Years ago I bought some BOMs at JoAnn's that I had put away and only rediscovered recently. I remember that I loved the colors in this one and liked the idea of pre-cut pieces. I thought this would be fun to pull out and work on, especially since cutting is not one of my favorite parts of quilting.

I got all the pieces out for the January block (notice it's 1998!) and started to sew. It didn't take long to realize that something wasn't working. Some of the pieces were cut smaller than the dimensions shown on the templates. So parts of the bear paws didn't fit! I got frustrated but recovered and took it all apart. It took two more times sewing and taking apart plus some fabric from my stash, but the block is finished and I really like it. I'll just have to incorporate some of those stash fabrics in other blocks to make it work. I don't know what happened but I didn't get the finishing kit....just some of the fabric in yardages so I'll end up making my own sashings and borders.

The next two blocks are coming together well so I think that was just a one-time problem. I hope so since I have several years worth of these BOMs. I think they will be fun to work on whenever I want to sew but don't want to cut and think a lot. The instructions are all in pictures (as well as words) and that makes them very easy to follow. Some days I feel like sewing but not thinking very hard.

Well, I'm off to get ready to watch the OU Sooners women's basketball team play in the Sweet Sixteen. Our men's team lost to North Carolina in the Elite Eight game today and we were sad to see that. Our women are awesome so I hope they play well. BOOMER SOONER!!!

Hope your days are filled with sunshine and stitching. Wishing you blessings.