Spring Blooms

 Flowers, flowers...everywhere.  In spite of our most welcomed rains today, spring is all around us.  I've finished all of my little tulip blocks and am now assembling them into the larger blocks to create my Tulip Time quilt.  This is a Bonnie Hunter quilt pattern.  I may not have it finished for this spring, but I'm really liking the secondary pattern that the green stems and leaves are creating.

The outdoor flowers are even more prolific.  The roses are coming into full bloom.  I always love the first flush of flowers.  

The clivias have also shown their blooms this week. 

My Dragon Dreams came together and is ready for gifting.  I loved making this pattern. 

The hummingbird nest in the plant on my mom's front porch is supporting it's second set of babies this spring.  Since escrow closes this week on her home, I won't be able to get updated pictures as they grow.  It has been so much fun to watch these little ones grow and fly off over the years.  I hope the new owners will keep the plant and enjoy them as much as we have.  

As March comes to a close, I can say that it has been a good month for my block count.  With the additional tulip blocks and now making them into bigger blocks, I have added an additional 22 blocks this month.  This gives me a total of 93 for the month of March.  I'll be linking them up with the 350 Block Challenge.  

National Quilting Day

 Happy National Quilting Day.  I hope everyone has had a chance to get a few minutes of stitching in some time today.  I was lucky enough to spend several hours at the sewing machine today.  I'm working on a slow going project right now.  I'll share it momentarily.  

Project Quilting, Season 13 was all about Flying Geese this week.  I love Flying Geese blocks and I enjoy making them too.  The Bloc Loc rulers make it so easy to trim them.  I've needed a mini quilt to use for this time of the year  - spring green or St. Patrick's Day.  Whichever, it works great as a mini or a mug rug at just six inches square.  

I'm a bit behind on baby quilts for the new grandbaby and two new great grandbabies born in the last few months.  I finished one last week and am currently working on the second one.  Any ideas of where I am going with this one? 

One thing for sure is that I am adding up blocks in a hurry for my monthly total for the 350 Block Challenge by Prairie Moon. My total this month is already at 61.  

I am enjoying the springlike days with everything starting to bloom here.  It sounds like our temperatures will be more summer-ish next week....my favorite.  I know snow is still in the forecast for many places, but I know spring is just around the corner for you.  

Spring in the Air

 I know that a lot of people do not care for Daylight Savings Time, but I am so excited for this weekend and "springing ahead" an hour.  I love the longer hours of daylight.  

With several new babies in the family, I needed to get started on some baby quilts - my favorite kind of quilts to make.  I dug through some of my red fabrics to create hearts.  The pattern is With Love from Gigis Thimble.  It is currently in the process of being quilted, but I grabbed a few shots of it on the line before I started the quilting.  I am terrible at following directions these days.  Instead of sixteen hearts, I made twenty five.  I may just have to make a second quilt. 

Lots of time has been spent in the garden lately.  Plants have been divided and transplanted with the arrival of spring.  Meanwhile, the cymbidiums are all starting to bloom.  Many of these are plants were my dads at one time.  It's always nice to see them continuing to bloom.  He had quite the green thumb.  

The roses are also ready to burst open.  These little Angel Face roses were eager to be among the first blooms.

The Gerbera daisies are also prolific right now.  I love this wall hanging vase that was a gift from a dear friend.  

I saw this on the internet the other day and thought it sadly humorous.  While out today the cheapest gas I saw was $6/gallon.  Ouch!  

Block Check-In

 It's hard to believe that it is time to do a block check-in for February already.  I know it was a short month, but........

It was a rather crazy month around here, so my sewing really came in spurts.  Most of it was mindless piecing - just to be sitting at the machine with no thinking required.  I have a lot of flower bits all ready cut for that reason.  I tend to use them for leader/enders, but that was my sewing this month.  Surprisingly, I managed to get 48 flowers finished this month.  I'm linking these up with Prairie Moon Quilts.

We had family from Iowa in town last week to celebrate the life of my mother.  While here we visited the Reagan Library and spent some time at the beach.  To us it was chilly as the coldest storm to hit this season was upon us, but they thought it was warm.  Guess it is all relative!  The surf was good so we enjoyed watching the surfers catch their waves.  

In a recent giveaway at Crayon Box Quilt Studio, I was the winner of a delightful book of quilts that use 10" layer cake squares.  Michele Kuhns has a quilt in it called Jeweled Diamonds.  I have followed Michele for a number of years so was thrilled to see her published.  There are a lot of fun looking quilts in the book.  So many decisions!!!

Spring is right around the corner and I am enjoying the longer days.  I'm hoping to see a bit more sewing this month.  We shall see.