We are preparing for the big barn baby shower, so there’s no time for existential crises or even complaining about the weather, which has ironically now turned toward spring. (I forced the issue with Mother Nature by buying daisies at Home Depot.)

This week is all clean, clean, clean, and next week is all cook, cook, cook. The following week is collapse, collapse collapse. So I may take a week or so off the blog. Don’t miss it when I come back– this shower promises to be the most redneck event ever planned. Because we don’t know a lot of people up here, our guests were invited to bring their men. Lawn tractor races were mentioned and I’m fine with most activities as long as the guns don’t come out until after the party. Gotta love Maine.

Not much sewing has happened and it won’t. The mushroom quilt, after being so proud of myself for loading it perfectly, is now turning into a rush job. And I still need a Welcome Baby banner.

I didn’t finish up my graduation postcard yet. This isn’t a huge seller for me, but every year someone asks for it, and it’s easy to update and thus make that person happy.

This year, I used it as an excuse to make the sample for someone I know. I reworked the set so you can customize it for school colors. Then, last week while wondering what I was doing with my life, I spent the time to make this cute logo backing fabric out of printable iron-on fabric. I feel like a genius and this is exactly the type of pointless sewing fun I need right now.

While cleaning up Quiltopia, I found a little happy box of other projects that need just a little more happy stitches.

Here’s a little placemat I was making out of extra jelly roll pieces. I wanted to then hand quilt it in bright red– maybe just little x’s or maybe a fancy leaf, just to try hand quilting. It would take all of ten minutes to finish piecing it!

Then–here’s a little bag of HSTs– I made them out of large, cut off stitch ‘n flip corners from one of my Frivols tin quilts. I would enjoy just stitching them up to see what happens!

And then I made two of these! This was a Lori Holt “Quilt Seeds” block from years ago. Not sure what that was all about– looks like a wall hanging? I wish I had made three houses for a cute table runner. The quilt block in the middle of the houses is gorgeous!

I may take a five minute break at anytime in the next two weeks and add a few stitches to any one of these things.

Look what showed up in my mailbox– remember a few weeks ago when I said I might join back in? I did!

Turns out I missed getting all those juicy precuts and extra notions lying around.

The precut collection isn’t totally my vibe, but I may just randomly sew squares together and make something. I do like the pattern, but I’d make it out of all greens– it looks like a four-leaf clover to me. Overall, it was a tremendous value for all these things– it was $40. April is a good time to join because that’s when the new block of the month starts. I might challenge myself to make a two-color block, based on the pattern, out of my chicken fabric each month– why should this cute fabric hang out on a shelf?

I finally hit the BUY button for this, which I have loved since I first saw it. This is made with Melissa Gilbert’s Evening on the Prairie collation. You may remember her as “half-pint” on the show “Little House on the Prairie.”

It retails for about $250– then I poked around Melissa’s website Modern Prairie and she had it on sale for $180. It was still too much for me, considering the stacks of boxed quilts I have around here! But I started stalking Modern Prairie…

One day, when I went to the website, a pop-up box declared, “Get 15% off your first order!” Hmmm…

Do you ever sign up for texts and emails to get a coupon and then immediately stop them?

I do.

$150 with free shipping, and it arrives today. That’s a win!

So that’s the scoop– I’m feeling like after the big shower when I’ll finally have time, some big quilty starts may be in order, as a reward. The flaw in my logic is that after the big event, the even bigger event is coming in early July– a baby boy, demanding lots of snuggle time from this willing grandma! It’s shaping up to be an amazing summer.

But for now, it’s back to cleaning!

xox
Carol