We’re postponing our celebration till a little later in the week– the sap is flowing, and the boil is on today. I don’t think I could possibly make corn beef and soda bread anyway– just feeling a bit overwhelmed and a bit behind on everything. It’s tax time– I’m the family accountant. So proud that my family all eschewed the 40 hour a week, 401K job, and instead opted for the 24/7 be-your-own-boss jobs! It’s a lot of Schedule C’s, folks. I also decided to repaint the bathroom after thinking about it for months. Could this have waited until after April 15th?

No. No, it could not.

Duh–I started to realize last week I have way too many projects going! It’s a cyclical thing. So I picked out a couple to put away for a bit– BRIO is one of them. I have three beautiful blocks finished and was hoping to get the table runner part of it assembled, but I just have other deadline stuff I need to finish. It’s all self-imposed deadlines–haha!

The TON of fabric I purchased to finish my big BRIO table set came in– Vintage Bread and Butter by American Jane from 2015– yay! I picked my favorite yellow floral for the backing, the blue geometric for the binding, and the rest 1/2 yards because as always I made this project bigger than it was supposed to be. Kudos to Sandy Klop for stocking her past collections.

As I packed it up to put away, I realized what once nicely fit in that tiny tin, now needs a bigger place on my shelves.

This was supposed to be my March-April small project, so there’s still plenty of time to git-er-done. I certainly hope it doesn’t spend too much marinating time in my big closet– as much time as some others have!

So here’s my first deadline project– the Bobbin Blooms quilt needs to be done for a May 3rd baby shower. I came up with a simple quilting plan on ProCreate and I already have four of the flowers done. I varied the width of the lines just to add some interest…

and added this cute little squiggle to the stems.

Here is the bobbin quilting– my best impression of thread on a spool!

That straight line/swirly line combination is always a good one, so I perused YouTube for potential ideas and found this blog I really like– very creative quilting ideas that I haven’t seen before.

https://ipatchandquilt.wordpress.com/

I fell in love with this “Exotic” filler and have been practicing it, again, on ProCreate. I think I can get it to work– just remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect to look good! This picture is from the link above. I’ll be back to I Patch And Quilt again!

I’m probably going to work exclusively on this project in my free time this week. One thing at a time, right? The problem with that is there’s only so much to say about it on the blog! But don’t worry, I did buy quite a few things last week– did you see the fat quarter sale at Fat Quarter Shop last weekend?– and I’ll show you them as they come in. (Note the use of the PLURAL form, heehee…)

After that, I’m loading the big Moonbeams quilt– deadline is June 29th wedding. This will be the largest thing I have ever quilted, but if I just take it a block at a time, what’s the difference, right? I did manage to get the last couple of leaves stitched on the cross stitch part of this matching project, and if I don’t feel like long arming at night, (you have to be able to stand, heehee) I’ll make the pillow out of it.

Then, I did start working on my “Points West” piece– deadline is May 15th. I was brutally reminded why I stopped working on this! The paper piecing is killer. I’m just going to slowly forge ahead– a piece here, a piece there. As I said, the deadlines are all self-imposed!

If someone had told me these two pieces were made eight years apart, I wouldn’t have believed them, so I’m happy for that.

I did finish this little poinsettia basket on the appalling cross stitch, and started a wreath with a candle in the middle of it. I just can’t seem to put it away– a very good sign.

For San Fran Stitch– the bowl fillers of the month released– did you hear the BUZZ?

Winter is slowly releasing its grip on the meadow– we had some days well into the high 50s over the weekend. I walked back to check our hives– they were swarming! Hundreds and hundreds of bees. The little hive, not so much! I stood a good long time, waiting for one intrepid bee to emerge. No dice. I’m hoping we can crack open the hive sometime this week and see what’s going on in there.

Today is all rain, so I expect even more of that snow to disappear. We have had constant snow cover since Thanksgiving– I’m ready to see it go . So here’s my current view– the snow piles I once imagined as pristine as the Swiss Alps are now looking more like Swiss cheese.

I said to Mr. SFO, “We’re going to have to get all the dirt out of the garden and back into the driveway.” And he said, “I’m sure you won’t have any problem doing that.” 🙂

So in that spirit, I’ll wrap up my post and put my shoulder to the wheel! Have a wonderful week!

xox
Carol