Green Scraps, Continued

This week I didn’t get much sewing time in at all. On Saturday after my Quilts for Kids workshop, the family gathered to celebrate Mother’s Day at my son Ryan’s house. My daughter-in-law Kim and I were the special mothers, but we also celebrated belated birthdays for Bruce and my granddaughter Lauren. There were a lot of gifts exchanged! Ryan fixed his special birria tacos. He even made the dipping consomme’ to go with it. Yum!

Sunday was a quiet day at home, just the way we like it. The weather was still nice (ahead of the storm due to arrive on Monday), so I spent the afternoon working out in the yard. I’m still waiting for our garden handyman to come - he’s been very ill with an infection but is finally on the mend. He’ll be digging up a couple barberry bushes for me, removing the top layer of old soil and bark mulch, and straightening out all the stone edging between the beds and the patio. Then we’ll add a fresh layer of rich topsoil. But in the meantime I had purchased some perennials I needed to plant, so I did; two rose bushes, two more brunnera, some astilbe, a hosta, some lady’s mantle. I planted two of my Mexican Talavera pots with a few annual flowers as decorations for the Cinco de Mayo luncheon and took those up to the clubhouse. Once our yard guy completes his heavy work, I can go in and plant my perennial groundcovers and showy annual flowers. Hopefully I can get some pictures by early June. Oh! We bought a new blue standing patio umbrella to set up too! 

Monday was filled with meetings; Tuesday was Weight Watchers, the annual Cinco de Mayo luncheon at the clubhouse, and a CT scan appointment for Bruce. Wednesday was an eye appointment for me so they could measure my right eye in preparation for my upcoming cataract surgery, and then we went to Costco to order eyeglasses for Bruce. I got in a bit of sewing time that evening and spent it making a couple playing card holders.. You may have seen these before; they’re made two compact disks layered with a piece of batting and a cute fabric that’s gathered on the inside. Then they’re held together by a cute button on either side, sewn through the center to make it all sturdy and tidy. They make holding a handful of cards soooo much easier!

Here are the two I finished this week, and then I have two more to make next week. First, a top view.

And the side view where you place the cards in. 

On Thursday morning I did laundry and errands and then played cards at the clubhouse with my friends. The woman I made the warm floral card holder for was so tickled! She’s recovering from a hand surgery, so it helped alleviate her cramping hand while holding cards. Friday morning was my annual physical (all is fine, but he says I need a bone density scan done), and I did the grocery shopping. FINALLY I got to do some sewing in the afternoon. Green is the May color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I set to work.

Eleven flying geese blocks. These will finish at 6”.  I also did one 6” string block because I was going to add a column of strings to the green scrap quilt I’m making. But then I decided to save the string blocks for Quilts for Kids instead. However, I did get another column of green blocks sewn. Here’s the mess pinned to the design board. You may notice that I cannot pin evenly to save my life. But no matter - this is still a work in process and things will be getting shuffled.

The snowball column on the left will move to a different spot and the cross-like blocks will have ivory spacer strips sewn between them. It was necessary to add the darker sashing strips between columns to make sense of the mess. It was looking so “one-note” and bland until I added them.. The pink checkerboard block bugs the heck out of me, and so does the block above it screaming for attention. I’ll move that column over to a side and see if that helps. If not, I may rework those two blocks.

This morning, Cousin Kim and Ruby and I are going to the annual quilt expo here in town. So I’d better get moving!!