Another wedding invitation, another quilt

We received a wedding invitation last week.  We knew they were engaged, but we had not heard about a date.  Now, we know.  Five weeks.  Don't people realize it takes longer than that to make a quilt?  Don't people realize that selecting a date requires officiate, venue, caterer, band, and QUILTER?

Anyway, Rob is on the injured list and no big projects were happening, so I dug right into it.  I got up early Saturday, in a bit of a panic that I wouldn't get it done and looked through my UFOs.  Nothing.  Then, I pulled out the pattern books.  I found a couple.  But, was feeling intimidated by the number of pieces.  So, I fell back on one of my favorite quilt books, Twosey-Foursey Quilts by Cathy Wierzbicki.  I love this book.  It's full of patterns that are based on 2 1/2 and 4 1/2 inch wide strips. 

We knew we wanted a colorful quilt.  Bright, bold colors, but not too bright so it would reflect both of them.  Stupid me didn't take a pic after I'd cut the background pieces to go around the edges and finish it out. 

This quilt was so easy that I cut out all the pieces except the edges in about four hours on Saturday morning.  Almost all of it came from my batik scraps.  Saturday afternoon, I started sewing the stars and they were done on Sunday morning and I laid it out with the larger hst units to get my colors to show up, alternating warm and cool colors so they'd show up.  And, then I put those blocks together and laid it out again and cut the background to go around the border and by dinner time last night, I had the first two rows put together.  I can't really ask for any quilt to go together faster than that. 

Hopefully, I'll have the rows together by next weekend so I can sew the rows together and add a border and get it pin basted and the weekend after that, I can quilt it. 

Plenty of time before the wedding. 

And, yet I still predict I will be sewing the last of the binding down on the day before the wedding. 

I could have finished this top this weekend, but I also wanted to work in the yard.  Nothing significant.  Just continuing to clean out the leaves.  I found a picture a couple weeks ago where I had grown caladiums in front of glider and decided I wanted to do that again.  But, I needed to clear up some detritus that had built up in that spot since I'd let it go.  That went well, til I moved a flower pot and came face to face with a snake that was in it.

My intellect told me it was just a garden snake and was not dangerous.  But, my instinct told me that was a pretty good sized snake.  Between them, I didn't stop working in the garden.  But, I did go get a pair of leather gloves to wear. 

One of the things I did was tie this bougainvillea up so it would be a taller shape.

This and the iris are all that are in bloom right now, but I can tell, it's not going to be long before things start to put on flower heads.  We had temps below freezing last week, and a couple of perennials that I thought were going to make it into spring with a head start from last year got bit back.  We talked about whether it was better to try to cover them or let nature have its way and decided it was probably better to let nature do its thing.  She's been doing her job for millions of years.  May as well trust her, right?

Everybody have a great Monday.  I'm adjusting to the time change.  My bedside clock didn't get reset so I thought I'd woken really early.  I went back to sleep, and just as I got into a real deep sleep, Rob was up and moving about.  And, I haven't been able to shake that groggy feeling yet.  I think some yoga might do the trick.  Get the old body moving and maybe the brain will catch up.  It's not going to be the kind of week that I can afford to be off my mark.  Everything is so busy at work.  Too many projects.  I move one thing forward as far as I can, then pick up something else with no break between. 

Hmmm, come to think of it, that's what I did this weekend, too.  Guess I am stuck in a back to back project habit. 

Lane