Another May Comes to a Close

May has been a lovely month here in the Salt Lake Valley and in my sewing room as well. Plenty of sunshine outside and sewing progress inside. It’s been fun working with green scraps, and I was able to finish the last of my planned Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks for the month. Let’s dig in. 

Green is a color I have a lot of, so I decided to make 8 Paint Chip blocks this month instead of the usual 4-6. These are just 8.5” blocks sewn with 2.5” squares and an occasional 2.5x4.5” rectangle thrown into the mix. The pattern of colors and neutrals, at least for me, is deliberately varied. Here are my green blocks for the month.

I love playing with the different greens like mint, olive, forest, etc. and coming up with different blocks within a given colorway. Admittedly there are some squares that could be at home in a different block, but overall it seems to work. 

Here are all my Paint Chip blocks so far for this year.

Naturally, I’ll keep going. I’m going to need a total of 48 blocks. Right now there are 28. I may go back and do a couple more pink and yellow, but we’ll see what the scraps yield with the other colors first. I’m just having fun and enjoying this process. It’s such a simple block. I only saw a single picture of an unnamed block like this on Pinterest last year. I have no viable link for it, nor any idea of what the original creator’s plan was. So this has been a fun romp through colors and patterns for me. 

That finished up my green blocks, so I moved on to the 12.5” Halloween blocks. I’m trying to do two per month through August. At that time I’ll have enough to assemble a quilt top around my chosen panel. This month, I inadvertently chose two rather similar blocks in that they both have black and neutral little four-patches in the corners (different sizes, though). They won’t be placed next to each other in the quilt. 

In June I’ll be doing the third and fourth bat blocks for the corners and will show everything together at that time. 

I didn’t get any quilt tops finished this week, although Rainbow Candies II only needs a few more seams to attach the rows together. That will be done today. 

My friend Susan L from Iowa sent me another lovely quilt top to quilt and donate. I did get a backing made for it, so that will join these candy quilts (and my green column quilt top) to be basted early this week. Four of them, yep. Hopefully I can get those done on Monday and Tuesday (just the basting part, not the quilting and binding. I’m not *that* delusional)  because Wednesday is an all-day infusion for Bruce - the last one, thank goodness - and on Thursday I have my right eye cataract removed. Not sure what Friday will bring except another eye doctor post-surgery appointment for me, so I’m not planning any activities that day. 

Last week at the quilt expo I bought some pale pink Kona fabric, so here are all the fabrics I’ve gathered for my grandson’s Storm at Sea wedding quilt. I still think I’d like to replace the one second-from-left with something a bit more green. And that steel blue may be jettisoned too. Or instead. But it’s better to have more colors to play with, even if I have lots of leftovers. (Muahahahaha!)

Cutting for the Storm at Sea will begin in June after I finish the four quilts mentioned above. 

With the long weekend last week, I was able to get most of the work done in the courtyard for this year. I hired a wonderful hardworking couple for a few hours, and they came on Friday to dig up two old shrubs, limb up the Japanese Maple, haul out the old bark mulch, straighten out the stone flower bed borders and spread the new topsoil. 

On Saturday I went to the garden center and bought lots of annual flowers and a couple tomato plants. I planted them in my flower pots, my revolving grow tower, and in the beds. And I finished planting all the perennials except for some ground cover. I think I’ll go back sometime soon to get a few more annuals to fill in this year until the new perennials grow and fill out the beds more

The brunnera from last year is quite a bit bigger than the two I added this year (with broad silvery-green leaves), but they’ll catch up in a year or two. The hosta in the back corner is a new addition as are the delphiniums, calla lily, astilbe and groundcovers of lamium and ageratum. 

I like adding pots into the beds for height and color. The white pots are filled with my amaryllis bulbs, and they’ll enjoy the summer outdoors until it’s time to bring them inside in late summer and begin prepping them for the winter. 

The photo below is the same basic view only shifted up so you can see the tree canopy. 

Looking at the tree and beds from the other side. 

It’s a small courtyard, but I love making it my own. And aren’t the edging pavers nice and straight now? They looked like crooked teeth before!

I decided to leave the barberry bush above because I do enjoy its color and height. We have a new blue patio umbrella to set up as soon as our family members come get the older white one and its little table. It’s too heavy for Bruce and I to move, and the big umbrella opens like a small rain umbrella - you have to push it up and place a pin through the pole to hold it up. It takes both Bruce and I to open and close it. With Bruce only having one arm, it’s just not practical. So we bought a big new blue umbrella with a crank mechanism. Who’d-a thunk?

This year I took one tier off my vertical planter because the top tier was too high and heavy for me to lift in place. So there are only four tiers and the top water reservoir. I’ll fill in more of the planting pockets with annuals, but maybe not all of them. I don’t want to worry about having to rotate it all the time, so I may keep sun-loving petunias on one half and shade-loving impatiens on the shade side. We’ll see. I want to rest, not work, this weekend! I took these pictures early in the week, and it’s already amazing how much these white petunias (a first for me) have grown since these pictures were taken. 

Here’s a different view of the same bed. 

Below: tomatoes, roses and lilies reaching for the morning sun. 

Have a good week my friends. I’ll meet you back here next week!