FRIDAY AGAIN?

Can anything in the world be faster than Friday arriving too soon? Of course Spring cannot arrive too early. Today we hit the near 60 degree mark with more sunshine on the way.

First news of the day: Jacob L. Bledsoe, son of my nephew Tyler and Rebecca, arrived last night about 10:30 p.m., in St. Joseph, MO making me a great-aunt, again. Weighing in at a 9 pounds and 9 ounces, he measures 21.5 inches long (tall?). The first Bledsoe male of Mother's great-grandson generation, he follows two sisters (Madison and Emily), and little Lola Sunshine the daughter of my nephew J. Zale. Back to making baby bibs.

After an intense Monday and bad weather on Tuesday, we ate at Red Lotus in Chapel Hill Wednesday, bringing home leftover and fortune cookies. My fortune reads "A pleasant surprise is in store for you soon." I just know what they mean:
The Rockettes have lowered the height requirement and raised the age limit. I may be called soon for an audition, no?
Or maybe,
You will be the best looking lady at the high school reunion, yeah right?
Or
The new Sony-Cyber Camera in my mobile phone will let you take fabulous pictures that will outdo everyone in the Digital Scrapbooking class, not even!

What does please me this week is the progress made on some scrappy quilting gifts for the ladies of the family. Come Summer we will be in Missouri for Mother's 90th birthday and I have planned to have some hand-outs for each of the girls (10 in all), plus some for DH's family on the west coast.
To date I have spent two weeks 'scrappy patching,' lot of 'crumb' scraps to make 9 x 9 inch blocks. Those blocks get pressed and the process continues by layering batt-scraps and a lightweight backing behind the blocks and top stitching a simple pattern, in a show-off thread color. I really play with this as the purpose is to provide fabric integrity and stiffness, letting the thread color show is just a bonus.


Of the eighteen blocks cut, ten are now quilted and two have the inner lining attached to three sides.



The fold-over top binding is not yet finished, nor the side seams or snaps sewn inside the top-right corner.






The finished example made a couple of years ago is outline-stitched print fabric, shown. I like the case but felt making the scrappy-patches would be more summer-y and colorful for the bright days of sunshine. I think the gals will all be surprised unless they read this first. Back to work, the trimming, stitching, pinning, stitching, pressing and much hand-sewing is ahead - I haven't a minute to waste.

The first day of Spring is just days away, bbf