What have I been doing? Amongst other things, I’ve been trying out various fabrics for sashing/alternate blocks with the Garden Gone Wild blocks but have yet to find the solution.

These are the 22 flowers in the garden. One of them will be used as a label for the quilt and the other will be the cover of a stitching book, I think, so the top will be made of 20 of these Ribbon Flower blocks.

I used so many different background fabrics for the ribbon flowers that I think I may be limited to something like a creamy white or maybe I’ll find a creamy white with green that works perfectly even with the two blocks that have green in their background fabrics.

I have a pieced border for the quilt planned but can’t start on it until I figure out what I’m using to set these with as I’d like to use that same fabric as the background fabric for the background of the border.

While hunting though my fabric to see if I had something that worked, I kept opening project boxes.  Three just had to come out.

The pink and lilac stars made with 1.25″ diamonds.

The brown and blue stars made with 2″ diamonds.

And the wild floral kaleidoscope stars that were also made with 2″ diamonds and that I had started setting with 2″ hexagons. I wasn’t happy with that setting so the whole thing got put away. Now that I have other setting ideas for these and the other two sets of stars I’ll be un-sewing the few wild floral stars that had been joined with hexagons.

But oh, my – when I was looking for that elusive fabric for the Garden Gone Wild setting fabric/border background – I found some fabulous projects that have been sitting far, far too long.

I’ve also been pulling florals as I’ve decided to make more of the pieced clamshells to add to my Pickled Ladies quilt. I have a pieced border mostly made for it and to get the effect I really like using those pieced border blocks, it needs to get a little larger. Thankfully, I found just enough florals that hadn’t been used in the top yet so a little un-sewing to take off the bottom setting half clamshells and then I’ll be piecing the arcs for and making more Pickled Ladies.

I think once that’s done, I’m going to pull out all the project boxes and make some decisions. I found some that I’d totally forgotten.

In other news, I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel last week. It’s only a mild case of it, so I’m not concerned and am wearing the braces, but I’m noticing the symptoms lately both when I’m using the keyboard and – gasp! – when sewing. That’s really slowing me down!

“Stars in the Garden”

One of our friends in the building has a wonderful black cat named Nigel. Nigel has many toys and had a cozy kitty house but he refused to use it. The house had been moved to different locations and left out for a few months, but he had no interest in it at all. So we were asked if Baxter and Jake might like it.

Might like it?? They love it! I brought it home and this was what we saw within seconds. The picture’s a bit blurry but it’s the only one we’ve managed to get of Jake in the house so far as most of the time he’s in it, he’s sound asleep and it’s hard to actually get a picture without disturbing him. It’s the perfect size for him.

Baxter is a bit large for it but, in true cat fashion, he managed to cram himself in it as soon as Jake vacated it that first day. And since then he has been in it multiple times a day. It’s hysterical watching him uncoiling as he exits the house. The new phrase around here is, “Look who’s in the house!” as we’re as fascinated with it as they seem to be.