Thursday's theme was "focus"..........

 I finally got all 108 blocks up on the wall and decided on an arrangement.  I'll sew them together today.  After a fun day with friends yesterday I was ready to focus on several projects.

Number 10 out of 12 stars is finished.  I cut the star points for the last two blocks too.  I also finished tearing out the paper in the rest of the Stepping Stone blocks in the second column.

I added two more rounds of strips edging my way out from purple to periwinkle.  Next will be true blue, then turquoise and green.  I think it is in the 22" range right now.

I thought I dug out all of the spiderwort when I was planting the last dozen or so of hostas last fall.  The spiderwort dies down before the end of summer so the hostas will fill in the spaces.

This is the native plant Heliotrope.  I know there is another plant totally different with the same name.  The flowers are very fragrant.  The plant is rather invasive so I have to keep it controlled.  Since these are growing on my bark path through the garden I will dig them out when they are done blooming.









Here is a link to Sharon's blog for the shortbread cookie recipe (cookies that I showed yesterday).  I mix mine with a mixer now instead of cutting the butter in with a pastry cutter and they still come out fine.

A super sweet day.......

Two friends came over to play yesterday and one brought rhubarb crisp which we ate for brunch.  The other has a broken oven so she brought a strawberry rhubarb pie to bake in my oven which we had as a mid afternoon snack, both with ice cream of course.  Oh, and we ordered pizza for lunch.  In case you are wondering, we did find time to sew too.

 

 

 I made one more star block, 3 to go to finish the quilt top.  I also picked out a square with a hole in it in my Boston Commons top and replaced with a good square.  Then I continued tearing papers out of the stepping stones blocks.  I have all of the first column done and half of the second column.  It was a lot more fun to tear out with company to talk to.

I had baked a double batch of shortbread cookies the night before so I sent a bunch home with them.  Now I have 3 desserts to choose from today.....yum!

3 more rounds............

I sewed on 3 more rounds of strips yesterday.  I think I'll add one more round of purple before I add the blue.

My neighbors have a mock orange bush on the lot line behind me.  It is as fragrant as the peonies and lilacs.

This is the left back corner of my lot. The mock orange bush is in the center back.  My gardens are like jungles.  This is why I dig up the hostas every 3 years and wiggle the babies loose and pot them.  There isn't room to let them get any bigger.  I dug out a bunch of the day lilies so I could plant the hostas in the front and you can see the lilies are taking over again.  I have a couple volunteer redbud trees at the left that I'll probably leave there since a large one to the left of this will probably die off in a few years.

The red wigiela bush is the last of the three to bloom.  It is loaded this year.

The bush has never had a nice shape so I'll probably trim it way back again this year and see if it looks better next year.

Another color..........

I have added my red/orange and red so next is red/violet.  So far I have just used pieces from my scrap bins but I don't have any red/violet in there.  I will have to go to my yardage and cut some pieces.  Then will come violet and indigo which I have plenty of in the scrap bins.  It is about the size of a placemat now.  I wonder what size it will be when it is finished.

Very few seams.....

I added 2 rounds of orange to the yellow piece I started Sat. night.  It is about a mug rug size right now.  My plan (I think) is to put all of the colors of the rainbow around it.

I don't have a cat (or cats) but this was the scene outside my kitchen window yesterday morning.  The black and white cat and the gray cat are large and go through my yard quite often.  I think they are males.  The black cat is new to my yard this past week and I suspect it is a female.  When I left for church the 2 males were in my front yard hissing at each other.  Later in the afternoon the black and white one was in the flower bed outside my picture window and he had blood on his face so I knew they had fought.  I want them to leave so my birds can come back to the feeders.

A little bit of sunshine..........

The weather alternated between sunshine and rain showers yesterday.  Late in the afternoon the sunlight looked so pretty coming across my small collection of pottery and the tree hydrangeas from 2 years ago.

I sewed a little piece of sunshine too from scraps 6.5" long and ranging from 3/4" to a little over an inch in width.  I also sewed the last 2 seams in the Grandmother's Dream quilt top that I started over a month ago.  Other than that, I finished my book, "Hardball" by Sara Paretsky.  Now I can get the last 2 books in the series from the library.

 

Top sewn and a little nostalgia...........

I was determined to get this top sewn together yesterday.  I had 4 vertical rows to sew on and then 8 horizontal seams.  It measures 56" x 71" right now so I could finish it as a couch quilt as it is. 

I was cleaning off a shelf in the basement yesterday.  These belonged to my mother.  She did crafty things.

Do you remember when this was popular in the 1950s?  That is assuming you were even born yet.

Here is something from the early 1960s. 

Do you remember when socks were called anklets and most people darned the holes in them?  Obviously I didn't follow the rules; the package is unopened.

I love the prices on these items.  However at that time we got paid 50 cents an hour to babysit and were lucky to make $1 an hour at a steady job.

Buy a new shuttle?  I'm not sure if I understand that.

I'm wondering if these were from the days that treadle machines were popular. The needles have a flat back on the shank and I don't know if treadle machine needles did or not.