Sunny Sunday

It was bright and sunny yesterday, albeit a little chilly and windy. Nevertheless, it was a nice day for getting out in the yard for a while. There were still annuals to plant, after all. After setting free the cats, I went straight to work.

My first job was to check on things in the greenhouse. I noticed the red leaf lettuce is starting to germinate. I first saw this one little seedling.

Then, I started seeing more. In all, four out of five seeds has germinated. That's a good start.

Everything in the greenhouse was given a little drink of water, and then I planted the remaining annuals in their shiny new pots. Since I'd planned to do this a day earlier, I hadn't watered the linaria, and it was looking a little wilted. It perked up by day's end.

This guy was none too happy about me intruding into his domain. He scolded me the whole time I was there.

After that, I took a walk around to see what was blooming. One of the rhododendrons is beginning to show its color.

These are the volunteer pansies that are growing in the pot with the cherry tomato. They remind me of my current quilt project.

The lilac is covered in flower buds, although nothing has opened yet.

The apple tree has some flowers on it. I wonder if we'll get more apples this year.

The Gracie Memorial Catnip Garden is looking good. I've seen Smitty imbibing quite a few times.

Also, the clematis is close to blooming.

After that, I got back to work on the Pansy Mosaic. I wanted to say something about these projects. They're less tedious than they might appear if one stays organized. Depending on the pattern, I mark off smaller grids from the larger one by choosing a common divisor for both vertical and horizontal rows of pieces. When I did the Cardinal Mosaic, the grids were 6 x 6. Only 4 worked for this pansy grid, which is 28 pieces across by 40 pieces down. I'd prefer to work with more pieces at a time, but the pattern has other ideas.

So I mark off a 4 x 4 grid on the pattern. The colors are identified by the background shade and the letter. (Those with no letter are blue by default.) In this case, I'll be working with just yellow and blue pieces.

The fastest way I've found to do this is to first lay out all the "whole" pieces and leaving out the HST's temporarily. This Quilter's Cut 'n Press mat works well for this. It keeps my pieces organized, but it also makes a nice little "tray" that I can easily move to the sewing machine.

When the whole pieces are laid out, I make and add the HST's. Those pieces are what make these slow-going. When I first started this, I was making them one at a time, which took forever. Now, I'm looking at the colors I'll need and making them all at once. (They really can't be made ahead of time because there are too many different color combinations.)

When I have them all laid out, I chain piece them together from top to bottom. Rather than cut each column apart, I just finger press them open and then sew on the next piece until I have them all sewn together. In the image below, the threads are still connecting them. I have a small cutting mat on my ironing board, and I can cut them apart with my rotary cutter.

Then, I sew the rows together.

And then onto the sections already made.

As I finish each 4 x 4 section, I highlight that portion on the larger grid so that I don't lose my place.

And this is how I torture myself on a sunny Sunday. Yesterday, I got quite a bit done. I finished the fourth section.

By day's end, I'd finished the fifth section too. And now the piece is half finished.

Of course, I had lots of company for this task. Smitty is enforcing the no-flying-fabric rule. It's a cushy job.

Today I have a few housekeeping chores, but then I'll probably spend most of the day sewing. I'd really like to have this top finished before May 1st. Probably, that's a tall order, but I'll have it well along by then.