Auditioning.......

My green scraps weren't long enough for the next rounds on the sunshine/rainbow piece so I pulled candidates off the shelves of my stash.  I didn't consider any batiks this time.

Then I pinned them up on the wall where I thought they might go and took a photo of them.

I imported the photo into my computer and used the software that came with my Canon camera to crop the yardage so I was just seeing strips.  I may reconsider on a couple of the really dark greens and then I'll start cutting.

In my front garden everything is growing together.  The balloon flowers started out about 18" away from this Husker Red Penstemon.  The Evening Primrose just travels underground everywhere so some of that is in there as well as the Coral Bell plant reaching out to the sides.  I hesitate to dig it all up and try to untangle it.  Balloon flowers don't like to be transplanted according the my perennial book.  They do however reseed wherever they want.

A few more rounds........

I added blue strips Saturday but forgot to post the photo yesterday.

 Yesterday I added some turquoise.  Today I will look for the green strips to add.  It is over 30" now.  The colors are truer in the photo above.

This is the view from my studio window right now.  The peonies are almost done blooming.

This is how much two of the porch pots have filled in so far.

This pot has some of the coleus that I saved over the winter in water.  They are really getting big already. 


Today is sewing circle at church so I don't know how much sewing time I will have.

16 patch top done, cacti new home...

 I worked on this top several times yesterday and finished sewing it together.  It is so much prettier in person.

I guess that is because the prints show up when you see it closer. 

I think this is my favorite block.

This is where my cacti are residing for the summer.  Now that the tree is gone in front of the house they get a little too much sun so when it gets really hot I'll probably have to take them inside and put them back out after 2 p.m.  My other option would be to make some kind of cover for the rack early in the day.




5 people with no email links asked me questions last week.  This is a reminder that I have an email link on my right side bar.  If you really want an answer, email me.  If you have a Blogger account and have made it private, there is no link.  If you have Google+ there usually is no link.  If you haven't enabled your email address in your Google account, there is no link.  I have no way to contact you to answer your questions.

Getting there........

 The last 2 stars are sewn.

All 12 together, but I need to rearrange so the backgrounds are in a more pleasing order.

I took the 16 patch rows off the design walls and labeled them with row numbers.

I didn't get as much done as I thought I would.  I only have 5 rows out of 12 sewn together so far.

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.