Over the Blues and On to the Dark Greens PLUS a Finish and a Start!

Angela at Super Scrappy has picked DARK GREEN as the color for May. The Rainbow Scrap Challenge provides so much inspiration to dig into that stash and see what you can come up with. I'm sure I have plenty of dark greens to keep me busy this month!

As for last month's blocks, I finished Heartfire blocks in light, bright blues. Here are the last two. I didn't get a picture of all seven but they are done.

If you recall from last post, I had an Awesome Land block under my needle. Finished it and now have another under the needle.

I still have two more "kits" cut out and they with the one on the sewing machine will make seven of the nine blocks for this month. This picture includes the parts available of the block in progress plus the two kits ready to go.

I may just call it quits on the light, bright blues and move on to the dark greens this month. Whichever way I decide to go, I'll be using the scrappy Awesome Land blocks as leaders & enders for my next project which I'm very excited about ...

The other day my sister told me that Gudrun Erla from GEDesigns was having a 2nd Quarantine Quilt-a-Long. The pattern we will be using is called Hope and will be held as an all-day sew-day on May 3rd. Linda wanted to know if I'd be interested and she, who lives in Texas, and I, who live in Illinois, would sew-a-long with Gudrun, who lives in Minnesota. Of course I said YES!!!

There are so many fun things about this sew-a-long, besides sewing with my sister obviously.

• Gudrun will have a Hope Playlist ready to go at 9am CDT, available on Spotify.
• Gudrun will give tips for quilt construction every two hours live on Facebook & YouTube. They will be at 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm, and finally 5pm -- the Ta!Da! moment!
• Gudrun will be having four guests also sewing the Hope pattern and sharing their thoughts and upcoming ideas and whatever. The guest list includes Pat Sloan, Nancy Jewell, Doug Leko, AND LISSA ALEXANDER!! Lissa is the author of the book "Oh Scrap" that I got the Awesome Land blocks from!!!! Super exciting for me!!!

The pattern is available for a small donation of $2, $5, or $10. All proceeds are being divided among three of Gudrun's local charities. She's about to hit $30,000 raised! She truly is a superstar!!!

If you'd like to join in, just go HERE to download the pattern. Hope only requires 10" squares and 2-1/2" strips. If you have a layer cake just laying around, that would be a fabulous start. You can use yardage too, of course. Dig into that scrap bin and join us on Sunday, May 3rd!

In other news, I have a finish to share. It has been added to my PHD spreadsheet and it also satisfied the April UFO Challenge project at my Local Quilt Shop. We will be working on #3 for the next couple of months. That's to finish up Kyoto .... finally! The LQS did our show 'n' share on Zoom this past week. I must say I almost failed because, in my haste and misunderstanding as an old lady, I turned off the video because I thought it meant Zoom would video the session and I told Zoom to "not ask me again". Well, turns out you have to have the video turned on to be seen! Who knew??!!?? So I missed about the first 20 minutes of the meeting trying to figure out how to actually turn that video back on. On my! What a dope!

Anyway, this is called Hospital Sketches and Barbara Brackman offered it last year on her blog called Civil War Quilts and you can still find the block patterns there.

If you went to the block posts, you will see that this is my own rendition. I knew I could not keep up with the very intricate larger blocks but, since I'd already completed the first one, I wasn't going to toss it out! I moved on from there and made the smaller versions that she called Sprouts. The border was inspired by Irene Blanck. She frequently uses an entwining design which I love.

We've had a lot of rain this past week. Overnight we got 1-1/2" as seen on my awesome rain gauge. This was a Christmas present from my awesome daughter!

 A cold and rainy day inspired me to turn some leftover chicken & gravy into a home-made pot pie. I used puff pastry and it was delicious! DH loved it and ate a very good portion.

April showers brought May flowers! This clematis is a very early-bloomer and I just LOVE the color!

For those of you wondering about my hubby's health, he still has all three tubes in place. We empty the two drain bags 3-4 times a day, measure the output, and he records the numbers for the doctor. I flush his kidney drain twice daily. It's quite the process and we've got it down pretty good. We've only had a couple of mishaps and but there was obviously a learning curve. I'm fixing him three meals a day which he eats pretty good. Slowly he's gaining some strength back but it is definitely still a work in progress. Maybe I should add him to my UFO list! Ha! Thank you from both of us for all your thoughts & prayers!!!

Have a great weekend! Now go wash your hands!