I had expected to have a finished Harriet Shrug to show you today…

…but I’m not quite there… Tuesday night, I finished the front/bottom band. But I haven’t had a chance to work on it since. I only have the bands to do on the sleeves (12 rounds each). So they won’t take long – I just actually have to have time to sit down and do them.

With the holiday tomorrow, I won’t get it in the mail by the end of the month. But I WILL have it done for the start of April. I’ve asked the birthday girl’s mom to let her know I haven’t forgotten her – I’m just a little delayed.

She had a fabulous party at a bowling alley, so I’m sure she’s not missing my present too much!

This weekend didn’t see much sewing… just one block made.

It’s the latest block from the Blockhead sew along. I really like this block, and would love to see a whole quilt made out of it.

I’ve put it in the “to-make” queue. It will be a while until I’m able to do it though.. Lemmy and I have a lot more Blockhead blocks to make first…

Burton and I finished up the last of the veining on our butterfly….

And we’ve started on filling in the colour. I’ve gone with a peachy-pink gradient…

I’m four shades in (there are seven in total) and I think some of them are probably too close in shade – because – as you can see here -it’s very hard to tell there’s four different colours there. But I’m too far in to rip out and change them up now. I think it will be fine once I get a few more of the lighter shades in.

I can finally unveil the final quilt from my weekend at Mom’s. It’s taken this long to share it, because I didn’t quilt it. I left it with Mom to work her magic.

And magic she made!

The whole thing is just covered in fancy stitch work, highlighting the simple red and white blocks

She did the most amazing job. I’m sorely tempted to keep this one… but I already have a red and cream quilt in the works for myself (and I really need to get back to it.

So that means this one is in the shop – and it could be yours if you’re so inclined.

I can’t remember if I told you about my latest Leader Ender project, but I’m making four patches out of my 2.5 square scraps. The bin they live in was badly overflowing, and I really needed to start making use of them.

The plan is to put them on point, with a plain block in between – something like the on point version here.

I was really hoping the project would put a good dent in the bin but so far…

I’ve got a good sized tower of four patches… but that bin doesn’t really look any emptier! I guess I’ll just keep making them!

Mother Nature played her games again and at the start of the week, dropped the temps and gave us snow. It was nothing that stuck around, but it was certainly a dismal contrast to the beautiful week we had before.

It’s still pretty cold, but the temps are set to slowly rise this coming week. In the meantime, the Pussy Willows are puffed up with pollen, just waiting for it to be warm enough for the bees to fly.

It’s such a neat little alien plant! And a super good source of early pollen for the bees. (I know I’ve said that before, but it’s so true!)

Not much new is blooming, thanks to the cold. I have some daffodils getting ready to pop, but not just yet.

My garlic has some very healthy sprouts and it looks like most of it made it through the squirrels winter digging antics. I’m looking forward to a good harvest. I love cooking with fresh garlic!

I was surprised to see the peonies poking through so early. And even more surprised to see a lily so far along. Hopefully the cold snap doesn’t damage the lily too much. The Peony will be find, but if the lily gets frost-bitten, those blooms will be done for the year.

All of my shrubs seem to be budding up nicely.

And with a couple weeks of warm weather they will be leafing up and blooming beautifully.

Of course…. all those buds are under snow once again. Mother Nature dumped this on us yesterday…

Lemmy thought it was wonderful…

Relic… not so much. Don’t worry Relly-belly. It’s going to be +10 by Monday!

As many of you know, I do my day job from my home office – far away from anyone I actually work with in my company. But that doesn’t mean I work alone…

I have to keep a spare office chair beside my desk because Relic frequently shows up to work beside me.

And he works pretty hard – he’ll spend hours there while I’m writing away.

I mean… his “work” eventually ends up looking something like this…

Now that’s the way to get things done!

Work continues on Wren’s birthday shrug

I’ve cast off for the sleeves and I’m working back and forth on the body. Being a shrug, it’s a short little body so I’m hoping to have this one off the needles by early next week and in the mail to the birthday girl before the end of the month.

By the weekend, I was finally feeling well enough to put my energy into catching up on the Stay at Home Round Robin. (I still have a wicked cough, and on-and-off runny nose but otherwise feeling fine).

I was three prompts behind, and the SAHRR was technically over (i.e. no more prompts coming.)

When last you saw the quilt, it looked like this:

The three remaining prompts were:

• Square in a Square
• Four
• Letters & Numbers

Now the thing I love about the SAHRR is that you can intrepret these prompts however you see fit. And as my quilt was already 50″ square, and I was starting to run low on available fat quarters, I decided to wrap all three prompts into one round.

Making some square-in-a-square blocks was simple enough.

I made two separate versions, and it gave me a chance to use some of the black fat quarters I couldn’t use in the other rounds because of the black background.

Four “Four” and “Letters” I decided to combine them into one block… a four patch, with fabric featuring words (i.e. letters!)

And then I got to sewing them all together into a big round around the outside of the quilt.

Then it was just a matter of throwing a couple more plain borders (thin black, and a wide light green floral) to build it out to a nice 73″ square. Which I think is a nice size for snuggling with your loved one in front of the TV.

I’ve got a pretty cream floral for the back, and I’ll bind it with more solid black to tie it all together with a nice tidy frame.

The wedding isn’t until September, so I’ll get up to Mom’s in the next couple of months to get it quilted and tucked away safely before gifting on the big day.

It’s nice to have this one done, and ready to quilt – and it’s always fun to participate in the SAHRR!

There were lots of tiny stitches added to my butterfly project this weekend…

I was hoping to have finished all the red veining, but as you can see didn’t quite make it. However, I am pleased, because those stitches are SUPER tiny, the fabric is VERY dark, and I didn’t have to rip anything back at all!

I am looking forward to moving onto another colour soon – but that’s for next weekend.