Spurts and Starts

There's an unusual color in the sky outside my windows today. It's blue between white fluffy clouds! There's no water falling from the sky either. Very strange, but quite lovely. Wonder how long it will last? I had occasion to be outside for the first time in a long time today too. The early flowering trees are in bloom and the daffodils are shining like little suns along the streets and sidewalks. Ahh, spring!

I've been busy at the sewing machines since my last post. Unfortunately I also got hit with a couple of days of unavoidable down time. Such is life. Here's one of the projects I'm currently working on:

It's meant to be a baby quilt eventually. The original idea was to put a focal print inside this pieced border and then throw a wide outer border on it and call it done. Apparently that's against the rules here in The Magpie's Nest. Too easy I guess. Or not enough of 'me' in the design maybe?

I created the four blocks below out of some fussy cut patches and sewed them together thinking they could be a point of interest in the middle of what will be a square quilt.

I also wanted to fill in those corners in the border with something other than more Broken Dishes blocks. I made up these heart blocks but I'm not really sold on them. They actually look better in the picture than I think they do in person. To my eye they don't stand out enough, or not as much as I had hoped they would.

I may just end up making more Broken Dishes or Pinwheels to see whether I like that better or not. Or maybe I'll fussy cut a few more images and make more of the framed square blocks for the corners. For now I have taken that off the design wall to turn my attention to other things.. As the due date for the baby gets ever closer maybe I'll be more inspired - or desperate to get it finished!

It seems silly to me but, honestly, I'm having a grand time just cutting up old prints into strips and patches for more Scrappy Trips and blocks for my Parts Department.

I've been on the lookout for something to put between the Shoofly and Hole in the Barn Door blocks  that are my mainstay. Recently it occurred to me to just frame up some of the single 3.5" patches that were accumulating with strips that will finish at 1.5" to create six inch blocks.

I think it's going to work. Plus, I really like the way the prints are showcased in this truly simple format.

In spite of all the practice and efficiency I've developed over time glitches still happen. For example, one day I was sewing a stack of Shoofly and Barn Door blocks, moving from sewing machine to ironing board at intervals. Somewhere in that space of maybe two feet I lost the half-square triangle unit that would complete this block!

I have looked and looked and cannot figure out where it disappeared to. In the end I was able to scrounge up enough of the two prints to create a new HST unit but it's driving me nuts that I don't know where the original went!