Small Things & Signs of Spring

In Pam Buda's Circa 1880 Club you get a new pattern for a small quilt on the even months of this year. This is April's pattern--I only have the top assembled. I am not sure how I will quilt this so it will sit on the back burner for now.

The cheddar Xs contain the names of the makers of the four blocks surrounding the X. I used up some of my extra swapped blocks to make this, and I wanted to remember who made the blocks I used.

My trial run cheddar and indigo piece is my April Mini-of-the-month with Wendy at The Constant Quilter blog. I hand quilted it and found enough long, skinny strips of the vintage indigo pieces from Sandy (my material creations blog) to make the binding. I really love how this turned out.

Now I need to get going on the actual mini I have in mind for the Indigo Challenge, which is to be completed by the end of next month. I really appreciate Sandy sharing her vintage indigo scraps and inviting a few of us to join her in a challenge to use them in making a mini. As I said, this was my trial run to get a feel for working with the fabrics. My actual challenge piece is sketched and waiting for some action.

 

You can see the quilting a little better in the photo of the back. Nothing fancy--just stitch-in-the-ditch, and triangles inside the large Indigo triangles.
This finished at 9 1/4" x 10 3/4". 
The backing fabric is a pretty large-scale print that was sent to me by a generous blogger. I thought it finished off the piece nicely.








My Circa 1880 quilt continues to grow, and with that, so do the number of tiny rogue blocks I am inserting. To make sure they are "period correct" blocks (after all, this is an 1880s quilt) I pulled a bunch of books from my "quilt history" shelves and spent some time perusing their pages, looking for blocks that could be made smaller and work on a 4 x 4 grid. This is my latest creation. The blocks all finish at 2".
I now have 6 "rogue" blocks in my quilt. There will probably be one more. I have made 23 rows, and that is where the pattern ends, but I plan to put 4 more rows in mine and one of them will include the 7th "rogue" block.

Four of the blocks are completely different from the uneven 9-patch, but two of them are just different centers on the regular block. Can you find all six?

Okay--that concludes the quilty content. Stop here if that is all you want. Otherwise, here we go!

Did you know that April 21st is National Tea Day in The United Kingdom? Well, the little tea shop next door to the quilt shop over the mountain held a "British Invasion" tea tasting on April 19th in honor of that day. There were British flags hanging all around, Victorian furniture out front, Beetles music playing, and you could put on a fancy hat and have your photo taken with the queen. And you could taste any and all flavors of tea they had in the shop. On top of that, the tea was "buy 3 get one free".

Left: Me and the queen
 


Right: My friend Chris, trying another flavor







We certainly made the most of this event. Chris likes all kinds of tea, and she tried 15 varieties on her own. I only do herbal teas and she also tasted a few of the 10 herbal blends I sampled. She could probably take home a prize for the most teas tasted at a tasting, right Chris? We each have a generous stash of teas at home and admitted we didn't "need" more. But that didn't stop us from taking advantage of the sale. It was a fun evening. They hold these tastings the third Friday of every month, and the quilt shop next door keeps its doors open until 8 on those nights, too. Win/win!

Just wanted to share a few photos of the signs of spring around the farm. You can click on them for a better view.
   












Before posting this I looked back at my last post. I ended that one by saying it had been two weeks since I had posted and I hoped it wouldn't be that long before my next post. Well, it wasn't--it was longer. Three weeks!! Where does the time go?
I'm making no promises about my next post.
Until next time (whenever it may be), 
Janet O.