I decided I needed to stick with it and sew the top half of this quilt. The art quilters are coming Monday and I need the design walls cleared off. I will have this photo for the layout of the bottom half so I can finish it later. There is a lot of bias in this one but I kept it under control and it is going to finish a little under 35" square. I would never be able to do a large one of this pattern but LeeAnn over at Nifty Quilts did make a large one and it is a beauty. Be sure to click on the link and check it out.
The cross quilt is basted now.
I guess I don't need to worry about any freeze before the redbuds bloom. We are still expecting a couple more days in the 80s and then the 60s over the weekend. I think they will be fully in bloom by Sunday.
I finally made some more black and white wedges for this piece. I'm half way there....none of this is sewn together, just pieces on the wall.
I sewed the border on #6 and I like it. This piece wasn't dark enough on the edge to stand alone and needed the border. I like most of the series without borders. This one is about 22" square.
Spring is here! I hadn't seen any robins until yesterday, 65 degrees with wind gusts over 50 mph in the area. Today is supposed to be warm too and then back down to the 40s.
I made a few more black and white wedges but I won't sew them onto the other pieces until I have them all made. I can see I need the distribution of the black and white to change positions more in the wedges. This will look a lot different when it is sewn because I don't have the pieces lined up nice and tight right now. It is kind of boring with just red/orange/yellow in it but it is my trial piece using wedges that were already made and leftover from another project.
I just can't get enough of these beautiful blooms. 
This is a pile of leftover Kaleidoscope wedges from a demo I did with the last class. I dug them out because I wondered if they would work on a project I wanted to start. One of the blogs I read is nifty quilts. Click here and go see what she has on her design wall and then I'll explain where these wedges come into the picture.
I have the same book as she has so I could go to it to see the inspiration quilt. I emailed her and asked if she was strip piecing and cutting wedges. I knew most people doing this pattern are piecing it one strip at a time on paper like she said she is doing. I figured if you need 8 wedges alike why not strip piece it, cut it with a Kaleidoscope ruler and add it on all in one chunk. She encouraged me to write a blog post about my idea.
I photocopied it in black and white so I could draw the seam lines with a red pen to see how the pattern evolves. Then since my wedges were already made I had to work backwards for the measurement of the center piece between 2 wedges. I cut a square I thought would be a finished size and and cut it corner to corner both directions (for 4 triangles) and then drew the center piece in and added the seam allowances and then cut it out.
I have it almost right. I went to the basement and got my black and white leftover scraps from a Strips n Curves quilt and pieced onto them and then cut out the shape. I need a tiny bit more seam allowance so that means it's a little too small. I will probably just make a small quilt from the wedges I have and use a totally different group of fabrics if I make the real quilt. The planning and figuring out is the fun (and sometimes frustrating) part.
There were just 2 in the class yesterday but several from the Tuesday class stopped by to see how they were doing. Here is the top ready for borders that one student made.
This second one is more of a denim blue. They made good progress today and I am proud of them.
The second day of a garage sale is usually slow so I am glad I only needed to be open for 2 hours. A lot of stuff left the garage even though a few of the things were free things. Getting rid of the stuff is the main goal. If I got paid for some of it that was a bonus. Today I'll sort through what is left and figure out what gets donated where and what I can just pitch. I got enough tables down to get my van in the garage before it started raining last night.
Floral multicolor
four groups of strips used in this one
This one will end up being queen size 
With 5 fabrics you get a ring with the center fabric of the strata. 
Everyone did great today. We are going to meet for one hour next Tuesday to talk about assembly and borders. 
Summer is officially here and we are feeling the heat already. I prefer 75 degrees myself.
We missed out on the big storms yesterday morning. Up north of us they had lots of trees down, heavy rain and hail. We had nothing until last evening and even then it was only wind and moderate rain. We were lucky. My garden is still safe. I need to get out and take pictures and document which plants I have where and which ones need dividing because they are getting too big.
My neighbor across the street always has a big garage sale the last weekend in June. Her kids come down from Wisconsin and set up all of the tables and handle the sale. This year I need to open my doors the same days and see how much of my parents things I can sell along with some of my own. I have to teach a class at 1 on Friday so I'll only be able to be open from 8-12:30. The mornings are the best anyway.
