Spring has been around early...

And it was the right time to make sure this cheery flower quilt got done. It was one of my priorities at a recent guild retreat. I also did a ton of machine quilting on Rosemary's t-shirt quilt, but that is for an April post. I still have those borders to do.

The blocks were four patterns for which I'll have to add the authors later. I promise. I used those as inspirations for the two clusters of flowers in the corners. You can see a peek of one of my great birds, Warren, in the corner.

I'll next finish up Rosemary's quilt, and then look towards two baby quilts for soon arrivals of two nephews. I'm thinking dogs, and have some fabric bought and cut for those blocks. While I might miss one arrival, I'll work to get these done over the summer.

Strategic quilting

Why strategic? Because I'm in the mood to do anything but what I should be doing these days. I think I need to have my quilting sneak up on me. I'm gearing up for a guild retreat on March 16. I'll touch down at our local airport that Friday after 2 days working in DC, drop off my bin of work supplies at the office, and then grab my sewing supplies and head off for a retreat. So I have next week to get the projects ready to go. Both the work and the quilting supplies. I don't want to waste any time on the 16th packing for retreat.

So I'm reluctant to do work on the projects I want to address at retreat. The major ones include: quilting Rosemary's t-shirt quilt (though I'll layer it this weekend), thread painting Mitchell's cat, adding borders to the batik flower wallhanging. I'll throw in some small projects to start in case inspiration or progress doesn't go well for these bigger projects. I went searching the blog for where I left off on the cat wall hanging, and it isn't to be found. Curious. I'll be sure to take a photo before the thread work begins. It is all fused down at this point, and layered. It's been over a year since I worked on it and I feel it calling to me.

So in the mean time, I put the blocks from a 2010 class with Karen Echmeier up on the wall and played with the layout. I think I have the center where I want it:

I will add an inner border twith some more orange and white four patches to have the diagonal line run out and be complete. Then I think a border of white and an orange binding. I'll proof read the layout a bit, to see if I can get the star centers going in a consistent, pleasing direction. It may be a challenge to get all the intersections to join neatly.

Otherwise my weekend will be dull: doing taxes, filing FAFSA for student loans for my youngest, and house cleaning. I think it will be a great distraction to work on this top and sort what I'll need for a productive and fun retreat in 2 weeks.