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I wasn’t crazy about these blocks last night. So I gave it some thought today and came up with a couple ideas to fix them after I identified what I didn’t like. Here tonight’s version on the left and last nights on the right .

Here’s what I changed:

I used just the sand dollar fabric for the starting square. I think it’s cleaner and doesn’t compete with the stripes… it lets the stripes shine.

And speaking of stripes, I used the narrower stripe that I had purchased originally for this before I thought the broader stripe would be fun. I think the narrower stripe is soooo much better! It reads as a stripe where the broader stripe reads as squares.

Here’s a clear picture of the different stripes.

I also made the white chicken feet fabric a quarter inch wider so you see a little more of that white fabric. And the white is more prominent with that narrower stripe.

I made 12 blocks assembly line style tonight and I was a little surprised I got them all done. Of course, I didn’t stop sewing until around 11:30 pm.

I got twelve green blocks made, squared them up and tossed them up on the design wall with the white nine patches.

I have to say, I’m liking this a lot better! I think part of it is that the stripe, one fabric for the starting block and the wider strip of the chicken feet has made a big difference. These little changes have sharpened the design… made the design less muddy… it feels more focused and organized, while still having lovely variation from block to block, which I love!

I have put the four blocks I made last night aside and will use them in a bag some day. I will proceed with this new design and make more of these blocks.

I’m having a hard time getting a photo of these green blocks that shows them in their true colors. I’ll have to try to remember to get a photo tomorrow during the day and see if the natural light makes a difference.

Here’s some eye candy.

That photo looks a little more true in color but is still a little dark.

I love all the little pops of colors in with those greens!

And finally, today was a gorgeous day! The sun shined almost all day, except for a rainy period during my lunch break. But it came out at the end of the work day and I got my pathetic boys our for a nice 2.5 mile walk!

This was their first walk in a couple days. Once they saw me getting my shoes and coat on they sort of went a little nuts! There were so many people and dogs out walking! I think everyone has been feeling a little cooped up.

Work tomorrow and then pickleball with my new membership tomorrow night. It will be interesting to see how the play is in a different time slot.

I was scheduled to play pickleball tonight but after playing for almost five hours yesterday I decided to pull my name from the schedule. Yesterday’s play session was the BEST I’ve had in months! It was so much fun! The games were real battles and so much fun. I knew tonight couldn’t top that. Plus, I’m tired and I need some recovery time!

My coach was there and I haven’t seen him for at least a month. He just came back from out of town. He was very complimentary about my playing and told me that he thinks I’ve reached a higher rating level than I was aware of. So that was really good news. Let’s see if I can keep up that level of play!

It rained all day today. My poor dogs are so bored and need some action. The only thing that is keeping my head up is the forecast for this week.

It’s hard to believe this is actually true! I’m really looking forward to some sun and some outdoor time this weekend! I’m also looking forward to opening up all the doors and windows to let the fresh air in!

I had to make a trip to Costco tonight to pick up some of Bender’s anti-epilepsy medication and there’s so much construction around here it took a lot longer than I hoped.

I’m pretty sure I sat in that spot for a full six or seven minutes. Luckily I figured out a better way to get home so I didn’t have to wait again. (and yes… it’s time for an oil change.)

When I got home I hit my sewing room to whip up a few of my green blocks to get a feeling for how this new quilt will feel. The green blocks are basically a quarter log cabin block with a little twist. I saw a quilt on Pinterest years ago that sparked this idea. I never did find out who made it. That’s one of the problems with Pinterest.

The twist is that I’ve inserted a small strip of a bold black and white stripe with an accompanying mostly white fabric right next to it.

I love those little chicken feet! It’s a little bit of humor in these blocks!

That little bright green square in the lower right section of each of these blocks is a Brandon Mably design called Sand Dollar. It’s been out of print for some time but I have a few tiny pieces of it in my stash. I thought it would be fun to use a small piece as the starting piece for each of these blocks.

After the black and white rows, I continued on with varying strips of the green prints. And, of course, this happened.

I continued to add strips to these blocks until they measured a little more than 8 inches, then squared them up.

The color in the blocks above is much truer on my computer than the photos that follow.

And hmmm. that one in the lower right is so wonky! That’s why I love wonky quilts. Wonky is my super power!

And now it’s time to combine these blocks with the low volume black and white nine patches I made a few days ago.

My original idea was to set these blocks straight, alternating the green blocks with the white blocks.

I’m not loving these blocks set this way. I think they really need to be set on point.

It’s hard to get a real feeling for this with only four blocks. I think I’m going to like it but I’m not sure I’m going to love it.

I’m wishing I had planned a nine inch block instead of 8 inches. But since I made all those nine patches, I’m going with the original plan.

These blocks took longer to make tonight than they should have. I’ll have to get more efficient and quicker for the upcoming blocks. The good thing is that I’ll only need to make about 40 of these blocks.

I need to get moving because I have a lot of ideas going on right now!!!

I posted some photos of my Brandon Mably Interweave quilt on the Kaffe Fassett Collective page on Facebook yesterday. And today Brandon Mably, the fabric designer, commented on it! Here’s an image capture…

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What an amazing honor to have the fabric designer say such wonderful things about what I made and about me as a creator! I’ve been smiling since I saw this!

I’m laying on the sofa winding down at the end of the day. It’s around 10:30 and I’ve already taken Advil PM so I can get to be early since I lose an hour of sleep tonight. Have I mentioned before that my favorite day of the year is the day in the spring when we go to Daylight Saving Time? I just LOVE having that extra light I the evening! I’m so excited.

You might be laughing that I’ve Taken an Advil PM at 10:30 and am planning an early night. Well, I typically stay up until 2 am every night. I’m a died I the wool night owl and at 10:00 at night I have hours left!

I started out my day at 8:30 for pickleball. Only six people showed up but I got a lot of play and had some good games. After that I high tailed it down to Molalla for Rico’s weekly sheep herding lesson. He was pretty wild today! I think the rainy weather this week and his lack of activity may him especially enthusiastic. The weather was nice…

Toward the end of our lesson a wild squall came through. The rain was falling sideways while the sky was blue in the background. Luckily it didn’t last very long. Good think Rico doesn’t mind if he gets wet.

Our drive home was lovely. I just love winding my way north through farm country after our lessons.

We drove through a few little squalls on the way home.

When I got home I did a little sewing and put together about ten more of the low value nine patches. After a walk with my boys and a good dinner I was back in my sewing room making bland nine patches. I got everything sewn that I cut out last night. I think I have a total of 30 nine patches. I’m thinking I’ll need 40 for this quilt top.

Since I’m using strip sets there are going together quickly and easily.

I might make a few of the green blocks that will make this quilt interesting. I still have a little planning to do, but not much. I’m pretty much ready to start cutting and then get sewing! Can’t wait to see how this looks.

I got invited to play pickleball tomorrow. It should be some good games.

I toyed with the idea of taking tonight off from sewing but I’m pretty excited to get moving on the quilt I decided to make next. I wrote a little about this new project in this blog post.

Since I made my Ice Storm quilt that I gave to my pickleball coach, I’ve wanted to do another low volume project.

So I pulled out the box of fabrics I had put together a month ago or so and started pressing and cutting. The first thing I need to do is make a bunch of low volume 9 patches that will be 8 inches square before they are sewn into the quilt top.

I cut three-inch wide WOF strips from 20 different low volume white and black fabrics.

Here’s a bunch of them, but not all.

Here’s all 20.

There’s a good variety of prints and values here. And aren’t those little fish adorable?

Then I sliced these strips in half and sorted them into groups of three to make strip sets.

Once the strip sets were sewn and pressed I sub-cut them into 3 inch pieces.

Here’s all the sets I got made and sub cut tonight.

I combined some of these into four groups of three and sewed those groups into nine patches.

These are not my typical colorful approach to quilting. But fear not. That part is coming. These will be combined with these lovely Kaffe Fassett Collective greens.

I’m not going to tell you what I’m doing with those green fabrics. It will have to be a surprise. Maybe I can share photos tomorrow if I’m able to get some stuff done.

It was an absolutely GORGEOUS day in Portland today. I spent an hour or so this afternoon with my sliding door open to let in the first warm spring air. It was sunny and over 60 degrees. I just love the first day when I can open up all the doors and windows in the house and let in some lovely fresh spring air!

And the rain comes back tomorrow and stays for four days. Next weekend we’re supposed to be up to 70 degrees with glorious sunshine! I can hardly believe it!

I did get outside today and get some photos of my two recent quilt tops. It’s nice to see them in the sunshine.

This dark one was hard to get a photo of because it’s too big to hang on the fence without it dragging on the ground. It’s still really wet so I didn’t want it to get muddy.

The colors are so pretty, but that is one dark quilt!

I love my Interweave quilt. It looks so happy and looks like spring.

I really enjoyed making that quilt. It was a bit of a puzzle and demanded some attention to keep everything in the right place to maintain the weave pattern. But it was so fun to see all those colors, designs and patterns come together.

Bender, of course, was happy to participate in the photo session.

Here’s my five quilt tops finished so far in 2024.

With the warm temps coming up everything here will be blooming before long.

It’s the weekend so that means sheep herding, pickleball and sewing. I will be doing all of those things tomorrow!

I had a moment this evening when I thought I would park my butt on the couch instead of finishing this quilt, but I decided to push myself and get it done. There wasn’t much left to do.

A reminder… this pattern is Interweave from Springleaf Studios.

All I had to do was sew the borders for two sides of the bottom portion of the quilt, sew them on, sew the stabilizing row of stitches around that section, and then sew the top and bottom sections together. Oh, and press it all. It probably only took me an hour to get this done.

What was my real motivation? I’m itching to get started on a new quilt and promised myself I wouldn’t do that until I wrapped this one up. I still don’t know what I’m going to do next. So many options!

I always love the final press of a quilt top because I love seeing all the fabrics together, all the seams, all the wonderful things and all the flaws.

I do miss having my friend Linda here to do that final pressing because she would keep a snipper handy and snip all the threads as she pressed. I didn’t take the time to do that tonight, but I should have. There are a LOT of threads on this quilt top.

I really liked that I sewed the final stabilizing row of stitches while the quilt top was in two parts. I’m going to do this from now on. It was so much easier to do and didn’t make me swear at all!

Here’s a little eye candy…

That yellow is so gorgeous!

Mmmm. Green.

So much color!

The Brandon Mably fabrics I ordered a few days ago arrived this afternoon. That seems really fast!

I sort of want that green stripe on the far left in every color way!

I’m going to try to get a photo of this quilt top outdoors tomorrow. Oh, and I need a good photo of my Flower Baskets quilt too. I’m glad I thought of that.

I played pickleball this morning at it was a great session! I had some good play and some really good and fun games. I also found out today that I’ve been given membership in a local pickleball facility that is really hard to get into. I’m so excited and it will revolutionize my ability to play during the winter months! It was such a wonderful surprise!

Tomorrow is Friday. It’s supposed to be another gorgeous day. And I’m so excited about the time change this weekend. The day the clocks change in the spring is my favorite day of the year!

One last thing tonight. I have scheduled my two days to spend lambing again this year. I’m so happy I get to get out there again, and the extra fun thing is that there will also be puppies there! they should be around five weeks old at that time, which is a really good age for puppies!

You can read about my lambing experience last year here and here.

I felt confident that I’d finish up my Brandon Mably Interweave quilt this evening, but I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t get a lot done.

I sewed all the rows in the top section together and got the borders sewn on.

I had thought I would do the side borders before I sewed the rows together but decided agains that. So I sewed the rows then laid out the border pieces, sewed the border pieces together, then sewed the border strips onto the sides and top of the quilt.

I made a few mistakes on the left side… that was the final side of that piece. I had to unpick a few seams and reorganize it all, then sew it again. Then I screwed it up again!

So by the time I was done with that top piece, I sort of gave up on finishing the borders on the bottom piece. But I didn’t feel like I was done.

So I took the top piece off my design wall and laid it out on my guest room bed to get it out of the way.

I did get the borders on one side of the bottoms section done during my lunch break today.

I was going to move the bottom piece higher on my design wall so it would be easier to lay out the border pieces when I remembered… I can just roll up my design wall!

It’s so much easier to lay those borders out when they’re at a reasonable level.

Note: I’ve had quite a few people asking me about my design wall recently. You can find a blog post where I write about it here. I wish I was able to refer people to the seller but I’m pretty sure he’s not making these any more.

I’m positive I’ll finish up this quilt tomorrow night. Positive.

I have a good deal of fabric left over from this quilt. it’s probably enough to make another quilt, depending on what I combined it with. I’m thinking maybe an all Brandon Blue Swirly quilt as a palate cleanser. These are all third yard pieces with one 7 inch square cut out.

I had an inspiration today for a way to use up these scrappy blocks that I made about a year ago. You can see them and get more info in this blog post.

I had originally planned to arrange them into a color wash piece but I sort of lost interest in it. Arranging blocks on my design wall is not my favorite part of the process. And these blocks have been sitting in a drawer in the closet of my sewing room for a year… untouched and unloved.

@Tilkunviilaaja on Instagram is combining these little scrappy blocks with wonky varying shades of gray backgrounds and then arranging them into a quilt top. I like what she’s doing and it would be a quick way to make these blocks into something more substantial.

I’m pretty sure I have in the neighborhood of 160 blocks.

I’m thinking maybe using different values of one color of batiks to border these. Maybe yellows. Maybe indigos. Maybe use up some of my scrap KFC 2.5 inch strips to border them. I have a few ideas and will give it a few days to develop.

That might be a perfect palate cleanser. Bordering those blocks would go quickly and I could be onto something else in no time. I could also make them into economy blocks (square within a square). That actually might be really fun!!! Hmmm.

Here are the exciting photos of my boys from this evening.

Rico has now retreated back behind the end table and rocking chair.

I’m plaing pickleball first thing the morning and it looks like the weather will cooperate. Maybe even sun, but likely quilt cool. It will be good to be outside and invigorated.

It was so nice to see the sun today after so many wet days. It was wonderful to do a couple meetings this afternoon with the sun streaming in my sliding glass door.

I managed to get away from my desk between meetings and got my boys out for a glorious 2.5 mile walk.

Bender’s age is showing and it’s kind of nice to see some sense in him. He KNEW he couldn’t get up on that log. He did put his front feet up on it but he never attempted to jump up. But it is hard to see the years pile up on him. He’ll be 11 in April. He is definitely slowing down a little.

Rico, on the other hand, had no problem jumping up on this huge log.

The surprising thing with Rico is that he actually looked in the general direction of the camera.

After dinner I hit my sewing room and sewed together a couple rows of my Interweave quilt. Then I took a quick trip to Costco close to closing time. That’s the best time to go in my book. People are a bit scarce that time of night and I can get in out quickly.

Once I got home I was back in my sewing room and managed to sew the remaining three rows of my Brandon Interweave quilt together.

That entire top row made of the little squares is the border. It will go all the way around the quilt top. You can see the start of the side borders on the far right.

I didn’t get the rows sewn to each other.

I need to add the pieced borders to this quilt… all made from 2.5 inch squares. I want to add the borders while the quilt top is in pieces, rather than sewing on long strips once the quilt top is one huge piece. Since the border is all small pieces, that seems like a good plan to me. I could even add them row by row on the section that isn’t assembled yet.

Even though I’m not quite done yet, I’m really pretty surprised that this quilt top has come together so quickly. One thing that’s made it easier for me is that my brain does well at recognizing and understanding how things go together and once the repeat of the pattern gets in my head, I can really fly.

I mean, come on! Look at this!!!

I’ve been giving a little thought to what quilt I might want to make from all the Brandon Mably fabrics I ordered yesterday, and I have some good scraps left over from this Interweave quilt. I thought it might be fun to make a bright and bold version of this quilt I made for my bed. It’s Moss Garden and is a free pattern. You can find it here.

I am picturing in my head what this would look like with all those bright, saturated colors and vibrant designs. That’s one option.

I had an idea for another quilt this afternoon as I was looking at Facebook during my lunch break and saw an ad., This is a quilt that is mass produced, but I love the big blocks and the bold and saturated colors.

It would be easy enough to replicate this. Big blocks of different sizes, rows of different heights, some thinner strips here and there. I hopped onto Excel and dummied up this “pattern.”

It’s basically made up of three rows that repeat. I’ve tried to set it up so that there are no seams to match when the rows are sewn together.

I would have to do some cyphering to get the blocks and strips the right size so I could maintain a square quilt. I’m thinking there is some magic formula to figure this out. Some stellar math skills would come in really handy about now. I might just come up with several different block designs that are the same size that can be put together to achieve a random and casual look.

More ideas. They just keep coming!

I did. I had to. Because it’s literally been days since I last bought fabric. Plus, I felt the strong desire to replace all the Brandon Mably fabrics I’m using in this new quilt… and a “few” more.

And because I know someone will ask, I bought these on Tennessee Quilts. I don’t tend to shop there often but they had the four fabrics I really wanted. And then it just went sort of crazy from there. None of these were on sale.

These are all Brandon Mably fabrics. They are all part of the Kaffe Fassett Collective. I have no idea what I’m going to do with these, but I will be happier knowing they are all in my stash. They are all so much fun and my brain is buzzing with more ideas for these fabrics! Plus, some of this will be a gift for a friend for her June birthday. It’s good to plan ahead.

I went and played pickleball after dinner tonight. It was a much better night than yesterday. I had some really good games and really enjoyed myself. I was so glad I didn’t have a disappointing play session again.

When I got home I was greeted by two dogs who were clearly not happy with their lack of activity. So I played a little game with them where I hide treats around the living room and they have to find them. We played this game three times. It helped a little.

Games like this are very mentally stimulating for dogs. Working their brains like this for 15 or 20 minutes is as good as a two-mile walk. They are both snoozing on the floor next to me as I type.

I didn’t have much time to sew tonight so all I got done was one row on my Interweave quilt. And it might be my favorite row of this quilt.

That yellow fabric with the blue blooms is so amazing!

I also decided earlier today that I would absolutely make this quilt just nine rows instead of the ten in the pattern. And I decided to remove the fabric I had at the top previously and replace it with this rainbow fabric.

The reason I like that rainbow fabric better is that it brings yellow and green to the top of the quilt. For me, it helps accentuate those colors elsewhere in the quilt.

I’m hoping to have more time tomorrow night to get a few more rows of this quilt done. The weather is supposed to be nice the next few days so this gal and my boys are definitely going to be getting our walks in!

Looks like this quilt top will be done pretty quickly. I had better start thinking about my next project. Maybe another palate cleanser. Hmmm. Ideas.

Had a bit of a sleep in this morning. Then after a hot shower, some breakfast and a couple cups of coffee I hit my sewing room to start getting all the fabric pieces for my Brandon Mably Interweave quilt up on my design wall. I was a little surprised how quickly it all went up.

Before I started I set up all my fabrics around my sewing room so I could easily access the pieces I needed and I could keep it all in order.

I had to move pretty carefully on the first few rows to make sure I had everything in the right place.

Once the pattern started making sense in my head, I had it all up in no time.

I’m so surprised at how this looks. I was really thinking it was going to be a lot more chaotic. It actually feels somewhat ordered and I’m pretty happy with how it looks.

I went and played pickleball this afternoon and when I got home I dug in and started sewing this together. I was able to get four rows done.

Isn’t that fun?!?!? I’m really loving the brightness of it and the eclectic group of fabrics.

Here’s the first four sewn rows at the bottom of this photo. I lost a good 7 inches with seam allowances.

I’m making the twin size. It’s supposed to have 10 of the patterned rows of fabric. Even though I’ll lose around 9 inches in seam allowance when it’s done, I think I’m going to end with nine rows because 10 might be too long. I’ll make that decision later but it’s likely I’ll make that adjustment.

Here’s a little eye candy.

Haha! I’m loving this quilt!

It was another rainy day here in Portland. So my dogs didn’t get much activity. Bender handled it pretty well.

(That reminds me… my sparkly winter tree will come down next weekend. I always leave it up until time changes in the spring.)

Rico didn’t handle the lack of activity quite as well. This was him as Bender slept…

Back to work tomorrow. I’m happy to say that we have some days of sunshine in the forecast for this week. It will be very welcome.

My pickleball got canceled this morning because of snow! There was snow falling at my place when I got up but it didn’t last long and it didn’t stick to the ground.

It was absolutely gorgeous on the way down to Rico’s sheep herding lesson. The sun was out with some beautiful clouds and I could see the snow covered hills in the distance.

It was cold enough that I wore my down jacket, a hat and gloves for our lesson. It was windy which made it even colder. As we were finishing our lesson the rain started and it rained all the way home.

I did stop and buy a huge bag of oranges at one of the road side stands that are all over the place this time of year.

They are really reasonably priced and soooo good! Linda and I bought a bag last weekend and really enjoyed them. I’m always happy when I find really good oranges.

It was dry but cold when we got home, so I bundled up and headed out with my boys for a three mile walk.

I didn’t get around to taking my Flower Baskets quilt outside for a photo because it’s so wet and muddy. So I threw it on the guest bed instead to get a better look at it with the borders.

And now I’m almost wishing I had gone ahead and just made it queen size. Oh well. It will have to be what it is.

After a nice nap on the sofa I got up and fixed dinner then hit my sewing room to start working on my Interweave quilt. With all the fabric cut I dug in and started sewing strip sets. I can’t go into a lot of detail on how this goes together. You’ll need to get the pattern. Just let me say that the pattern is really well written, includes a lot of color images, and it has lots of detail.

I did use my metal ruler method to make sure I was keeping my strip sets straight as I pressed them. Here’s a video that explains how I use the ruler.

I had all the strip sets sewn and sub cut pretty quickly.

So with all the fabric cut and these little units made, I’ll be ready to start tossing this all up on the design wall tomorrow.

A woman I’ve been mentoring at work recently gave me a gift card to Amazon, so I decided I wanted some under-counter lights. I found these rechargeable LED lights. They are really easy to use and you can set them to come on automatically when they detect motion in the kitchen.

They go off pretty quickly if there’s no motion in the kitchen. I only bought two lights to see if I liked them. They were really easy to install and I really like the way they work. So I just ordered another set.

I’m playing pickleball tomorrow afternoon and plan to get busy on this new quilt tomorrow morning. It will be interesting to see how quickly it comes together.