third time's the charm

I was feeling all smug about having this block finished after two tries yesterday morning, all ready to post this picture and blog about how I had managed to get it done even though it is only a 5 inch square, and how I don't usually do detailed piecing at that size

yada, yada, yada

but wait --- there is a serious problem with this block

look there at the bottom row

that's supposed to be a mirror image of the top row

DUH!
ok, so I picked it out and redid the bottom row and while I was at it I went ahead and signed the center

(being that this is an album block)

NOW it's done

and I still don't get how anyone does blocks this size on the sewing machine

I can barely manage to make all the corners meet when I do it by hand!

at least it's all finished WAY before the June deadline and it's off my list


this is the last of the redwood trees -- all 7 foot (or so) of it

the little blue lumps around the edges are the ends of the yarn that I used to fill all of those many (about 15) channels that give it that whole textured bark-y look

so now I can start thinking about the next step of this process -- which means I must clean off the biggest table in the house and lay the background out to start placing all 7 of the trees

in the past I did all of the pinning of projects in process with straight pins as I worked, but since I want to lay all of these down at once, I'll be breaking into the box of quilt safety pins so everything will be nice and secure through the long process of stitching them all down



two blocks for the Hoffman Challenge complete

these are mirror images -- sort of -- each one has it's own slight individual character

so last night I started on the next block for this -- water lilies -- which will include lots of little point-y petals




work on the fish block continues -- I was able to get a piece of kelly green tulle at the fabric store yesterday -- I worked around the side fin and the mouth -- working from the center out -- this is going to be very cool

and I'm working on drawings for the Wild About Flowers piece, thinking about using several techniques that I've been playing with
and the fronts of the baby sweater that I'm doing for the Knitting Olympics are complete -- 52% folks!!

this was accomplished while I was actually watching a part of the Olympics! BOBSLED! (feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme.....)


mittnz are progressing -- I'm doing the increases for the thumbs on mitten 2 in this pair

started on the final afghan square for the box last night

a new piece of jewelry is in the works too -- one thing about winter weather -- I'm getting a lot of stuff done in the studio!