It's Thursday - time for some the things I liked this month! Not so fond of the of hot, steamy, wet days so far. I'm hoping for a little less humidity for the next weekend. We'll see. But lots of things that perked me up this month!
Ghost (the deer) stopped by a few times. One evening a fawn trotted up
to Ghost and tried nursing, much to Ghost's surprise (and annoyance).
What is this little pipsqueak trying to do?!? I hope the fawn found his
mom. I've seen him a few times since.
I shuffled around a few feathers but
mostly kept with my original layout. Nearly all the feathers were cut from strip blocks, which resulted in six
feather pieces that had the same color layout: three from top-to-bottom
and three bottom-to-top. When I pieced left and right together, I got a
set of unique feathers. I was amused, though, that after I stitched them
all together, I can see two sets of rights and two sets of left next to each
other. I guess that means this is truly random.
Ooh - feathers all over my floor!
I spent a few hours over the weekend digging in the garden. Then it got too hot, humid and rainy so I switched over to sewing. I have 25 completed feathers! That's one more than I need. I'm in the layout stage. What fun!
The feathers went together so smoothly and consistently. In my last post
I had questioned if I printed the pattern correctly; given how nicely
everything lined up, these have to be the correct size. Pretty, aren't
they?
I added extra fabric to the pieces of one of my test blocks, to make the finished 18 x 9" block. But the extra work and trying to resize the pattern pieces wasn't worth the effort (and it will be easy to cut that down to the same size as the other). Now that I am comfortable with the process, I'll be sewing strips and cutting feathers this weekend!
June is flying by (although the heat last week slowed things down a
bit). Lots of good stuff happened.
I've been really enjoying the garden. It's been a good spring for
growing and for the first time in two years the yard is not overrun with
ticks. I'm finally getting the hang of the garden's rhythm and I can
identify many more plants than I could when we first moved in.
I'm not the only one enjoying the yard: look at all that grass (and
clover) and one bitty bun. He's behaving better than the deer (who
decided to lop off two mallow plants and a sunflower that had been doing so
well).
Overall I've been really pleased with the yoga mat's performance. I have been using it sporadically at home the last several months and brought it to my yoga weekend for a good workout.
I had already made modifications to the grippy sections (by adding on those triangle sections above the chevron) after a week or two. The center tends to stretch because the block bias runs top to bottom. It would have been better with a different pattern and likely a solid, unpieced back. It creeps about on the rug a bit. That's fine at home, but I was afraid it would really slide on the hardwood/linoleum floors at Kripalu.
While I was there I placed my mat over one of their yoga mats, which stayed put really well. On the one hand, that kind of defeats the purpose of making my own mat. However, it made me happy to take my classes on such a colorful mat (and I dislike the way their mats smell).
This was my first time participating in a mystery quilt. I was intrigued when Joanne announced the two color mystery quilt on Canuck Quilter. I have always enjoyed watching others' progress with mystery quilts, but haven't had the time nor faith in my color selection to participate myself. But only two colors? Hard to go wrong with that.
Around the same time, my mother had asked for a wall hanging to cover the wall above her new full-sized bed. (Interestingly enough, not a quilt for the bed itself... how long before she hints about that? LOL) Excellent. I could join in on the mystery quilt and know what I was doing with it. I let my mom pick out two fabrics from my stash and set to making the baby sized blocks.
