Poking My Head Up

Things are finally calming down a little. After my friend’s visit I had a hectic week of work getting my budgets done. I submitted them almost a week ago and it’s a huge relief to have that complicated and stressful task done.

My friend closed on her house here in the Portland area and will be here again before you know it. We’re looking forward to more pickleball together.

I haven’t spent much time in my sewing room over the last week. I really thought I’d do some sewing over the weekend but it just didn’t happen. I have been making a tweak or two to my Brandon Leftover quilt blocks here and there. I think I am close to the final lay out and may start working on getting these blocks sewn together soon.

And now that I see this photo here, I see a couple of things I want to tweak. I’m not in a hurry to get this done but I am going to need that design wall before long.

I’ve been playing with all the black and white fabrics on my sewing table to get the right nine fabrics for my black and white Interweave quilt. I think I’ve finalized the black and white fabrics and I have a fabric in mind for the background. I might not have enough of it so may have to have a plan B.

I’ve been noodling a little about what Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics to use for the vertical woven strips for this black and white quilt. I thought I might go with the color way approach from this quilt.

So I pulled some of the left over fabrics from this quilt, plus a few others from my stash, and started playing. I ended up with this array, sort of arranged with the oranges on the left and moving toward purples on the right.

I need seven fabrics for the vertical strips. So next, I started removing fabrics that I didn’t like. One had too much turquoise. One was too light. One read too solid. One just felt completely wrong. And I soon had separated this stack into the ones I wanted to keep (bottom) and the ones that would go back in my stash (the top row).

I like this selection I’m left with. I might need to open up a couple of these fabrics and look at them all with the large prints in mind to see if they work in the larger context.

But I’m liking what I’m seeing here.

I love the oranges, pinks and purples together.

We’ve had some gorgeous weather. Almost too nice for April. It’s been warm and sunny. it should be rainy. We are getting a few days of rain and I’m glad to see it come back. At least for a while.

I found out yesterday that I have to fly to Las Vegas in a couple of weeks for work. My friend Linda will fly up here and stay with my dogs while I’m gone and we’ll get to spend a few days together when I’m back. I can’t tell you why I’m going to Vegas, but I will let you know when it’s all over. It will be a quick trip.

I got to have my last visit with my friend’s Australian shepherd puppies last weekend.

And my friend decided which one she’s keeping.

She’s a real cutie and will be called Jane.

Rico, as always, was happy to get out and spend some time on the farm.

Me too!