Nice End to a Hectic Week!

Hur-rah!  I began a new job Monday after being unemployed for a few months.  With the time change and all the walking at the new job (learning my way around plus the parking lot was a short distance from the building), by Friday, I was exhausted.  I wasn't used to getting up and out of the house in the mornings, and missed the opportunity to take an afternoon nap.  *laugh*  Here is a picture from when I exit the building to the stairs I have to climb to get to where I park my car. 

Good news is that I dropped 1.8 lbs from Monday morning. *laugh* Forced exercise... gotta love it!

Thursday night I tidied up the house in preparation for my grand daughter's arrival (and her parents of course).  She is constantly on the go and loves to run. Being almost two (turns two in April), she is inquisitive and wants to check everything out. So the boxes in the living room and kitchenette area had to go to the basement.

Friday evening it was nice to come home and find them here.  We celebrated her birthday as she'll be in New England celebrating with her cousins next month and *sniff sniff* grandma and grandpa won't be able to get the time off to join them.  So her other grandparents will have the fun.
Not much quilting has been done this week or this weekend although I'm hoping to get upstairs before the night is over. 

*sigh*  Unfortunately the visit ended too soon.  I'm looking forward to the time when we will be able to have her for week long sleepovers.  That will be fun!  We did spend time visiting with her parents as we haven't seen them in a while either. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all the Irish and non-Irish among us!

Quilting Break

Technically it's not a break from quilting.  It's a break from the maple leaf/log cabin quilt as it continues to grow.  I've decided to add additional blocks to the interior and then I'm changing up the border rows too. 

My friend Janet and I follow the Craftsy BOM.  Here are my March blocks:

String quilts -- Craftsy March Block of the Month

I dug into my stash for the maple leaf/log cabin quilt as that is a scrap quilt too.  I think it came out nicely. 

April's Craftsy BOMs are paper pieced -- I have been avoiding paper piecing forever!  Hopefully it won't be as difficult as I envision.

Have a blessed day!

Maple Leaf Blocks

This past week I've been busy with the maple leaf blocks plus routine household tasks (tends to get in the way of quilting but needs to be done).

Chain piecing half square triangles Sunday night

Friday I spent 1.5 hours putting together 10 blocks only to spend another 1.5 hours ripping out and correcting six of them because I had reversed two blocks.  Ugh! 

This past weekend I had hoped to spend a huge chunk of time quilting but alas that was not to be the case.   I did get to spend about one hour chain piecing the half square triangles together.  Now to move on to the stem blocks and putting the blocks together correctly. 

Getting ready to make the stem blocks -- blocks laid ready to piece

The goal is to work at least two hours on quilting today and getting the 21 blocks done!  Then I can move on to the log cabin portion of my quilt.   Psyched! 

Oldest and his family will be here in two weeks and I start a new job next Monday which will definitely cut into my quilting time but will give us the resources we need.

Happy Quilting!