Teal Zeal

Can you feel Spring in the air? The days are getting longer and the sunshine has some warmth to it! I know that winter isn’t over yet, but the additional light is so refreshing. This weekend is Daylight Savings Time in the US, and we’ll lose an hour as we spring forward in the wee hours of the morning. Damn, I hate Daylight Savings Time! Hmmm...  Alfie wakes me up at 8:00 a.m. every morning. He comes and sits on my shoulder (I’m usually sleeping on my side) and either paws back the covers if they’re pulled up, or else he just gently puts his paw on my cheek. I wonder how or if he will adjust to DST.  I guess we’ll be finding out!

Alfie says to remember to set your clocks forward!

Aquas and teals are perfect colors with which to greet spring, so I was happy to be sewing with these cheery scraps this week. I’m joining the Scrappy Saturday blog party where everyone is showing their blocks. This week I sewed 12 Twin Sisters blocks (6.5” unfinished),

Eighteen string blocks (6.5” unfinished),

and 15 half-hexie selvage blocks, plus the remaining selvages into strip sets.

I sure had a lot more of these aqua (etc) scraps than I thought, so I will definitely be making an aqua fabric scrap bucket next week. I’ll also work on some scrappy Beachcomber blocks and a Scraptastic Star. Last year I sewed garlic knots most of the year and only have two colors left to make to wrap those up, but it won’t be this month.

And since I don’t have any teal or aqua African fabrics, I won’t be making any new International Sisters blocks unless I find a fun American fabric just to sew one for my personal quilt. Instead, I hope to get a couple wall hangings of the International Sisters blocks (backed by an African mandala print) assembled this month. But that’s a couple weeks off, at least.

I did manage to get four of these 12” star blocks sewn for my Seeing Stars Sewalong led by Diane Knott of Butterfly Threads Quilting. Aren’t they cute?

Because I started out the sewalong by doing 8 of every block for the first 4 months (intending to make a quilt) I have more than enough blocks to finish out the wall hanging and table toppers that I decided to make instead. Here is the wall hanging pinned up on the design wall. Only a few of the  seams are sewn. It will finish roughly 30x36”.

I didn’t use the pinks in the wall hanging, but will use them with the other blocks to make two table toppers that will feature more of the pastel colors I used. I’m thinking spring and Easter. I’ll show all those as they all finish up, also hopefully this month. 

In my last post, I showed two kid panels that I need to turn into kid quilts for QFK. Here is the first completed top. In keeping it simple per our instructions, I only added a lime green border stripe. The backing is pieced and everything is ready to be basted.

This second one is still a (limited) work in process. It’s been trimmed and the bottom blocks separated. I’ve added borders to two of the four blocks. There will be a narrow blue border then a wider orange ducky border. I plan to finish this one today and get both the donation quilts layered, quilted and bound this weekend.

There are other quilty things going on, too, like the deconstruction of On Ringo Lake (my March OMG) and two more baby quilts to quilt for Quilts for Kids in the next couple weeks, but they aren’t picture-worthy. So, I’ll wrap it up and get this posted. Have a great weekend, friends!