I Love Spring

It's finally spring here, kind of. In typical northern Indiana fashion our temperature this time of the year can easily swing 35 degrees or more in one day. Certainly makes it fun in the morning when trying to decide what to wear. But the trees are in bloom and things are 'greening up' nicely. It is much appreciated after a long winter.

These pink flowers are from a tree here on campus. I love the way they look against that blue sky.

These are in my front yard. I love the tree, but wish the owner had planted it elsewhere (rather than directly in front of a window) and trimmed it properly into a standard tree shape.

Hello little lady bug. These little critters are cute when they are outside. Less so when they find their way into my house and can't find their way back out.

I've really got to get cracking soon to start on my 'circles' quilt for the So You Think You Can Quilt contest. I think I've got a plan, but who knows. I've had several plans so far and I've changed my mind each time. I've got until the 15th, so I should be okay. Yesterday was my last day of class for my master's program. Cue the choir of angels. No more homework = more time to sew!

Get to the Point

'Get to the Point', that's the name of my entry for the second round of So You Think You Can Quilt. The theme was 'Vintage'. Here's a picture of the quilt I made. The binding looks wonky in this picture because I did a poor job of hanging it on the wall - it's actually quite square. When it came time to take pictures it was a rainy day, so I had to do indoor pictures in poor lighting. Ugh.

For this quilt I dug out five fat quarters that had been living in my stash for a few years. When I bought the fabric I liked the vintage look of the pattern, but didn't have a plan for it (story of my life). When the vintage theme was announced, I decided to try my hand at the flying geese pattern. I used the No Waste Flying Geese Method of piecing since I didn't have much fabric to work with. I really liked this method since it takes care of the problem of sewing on the bias. The binding is also cut from the same fat quarters, so there was very little of that fabric remaining. The finished quilt is approximately 36" x 36". Here's a close up shot which shows the prints much better than the full shot.

So, I've survived to make it to Round 3. Plus, I've finished another quilt and tried out a new technique. Success all around. If you haven't already, head over to Brown Paper Packages and take a look at what's going on. The entries for Round 2 were quite lovely.

The theme for Round 3 is 'Circles'. I'm tossing around a couple of ideas, but haven't settled on anything just yet. You'll just have to wait and see. Voting will open around May 16 and I'll show you my entry about a week later. Can't wait to see the entries!