Sunny Saturday

Good morning, my friends. The sun is shining this morning. It seems a miracle! It's been at least a week since we saw the sun last time. My first job this morning will be to get outside and fill the bird feeders. Also, I know some of the daffodils are blooming, and so I'll want to wander around and find every blooming thing.

As for yesterday...it was another day of not-much-accomplished. I took the first stitches on September's block for "A Year in the Garden." 

And I made some progress on the Painted Ladies. I expect to finish the quilting today. Nine of ten rows are finished. Here's the top half.

Here's the bottom half.

Now I have it set up to quilt the final vertical row. I lost my way a little yesterday, and so I've already quilted one part of it. It should be quick work getting it to binding stage today.

When I'd done two rows, I went to work on February's Inverted Star block. I have the half square triangles sewn together, and I had them about 2/3 trimmed before I needed to stop for the day. 

When I went upstairs, I saw the first Rufous hummingbird of the season. We have the Anna's hummingbirds year-round, but these guys are only here for part of the year. Seeing the first one is another sure sign that spring is on the way.

There are a couple of easy housekeeping chores on today's list of to-do's. Also...it's Pi Day. I must bake a pie in celebration. I'll get that going very soon. As for sewing, I'll finish off the rest of the quilting, and I'll finish February's Inverted Star. 

Next on my list of priorities is to attempt to sandwich this not-large-and-not-small quilt on the ping pong table in my sewing room. At 60 x 60 inches, it's right at the edge of the size I can sandwich in that space, but I've worked out a strategy to get it done. 

You might remember when I was gnashing my teeth over this project, trying to use up three cat panels in a single quilt. Then I read about an organization called "Leave it for the Pooch." I've linked to their Facebook page, which seems to be their only online presence. In a nutshell (info from Kim):

Our 501(c)(3) non-profit was started by my son, Jayson, when he was 11 years old. This year marks our seventh annual Quilt and Art Charity Auction. Historically, we work with animal rescue organizations that provide logo t-shirts, which our volunteer quilters transform into quilts. We also gratefully accept donated quilts and art pieces. All items are featured in an online auction on Bidding Owl, typically held for two weeks from late June to early July. Once the auction concludes and items are shipped, we host a live "Draws for Paws" event on Facebook. Jayson blindly draws one eligible 501(c)(3) animal organization per item to receive the funds. Organizations receive 90% of the proceeds (minus fees). 

They've requested donation quilts with an animal theme. When I read about the auction, this quilt immediately sprang to mind as a good candidate for donation.  It needs quilting and binding, but I have plenty of time to get it finished for the auction in June. That will be my next quilting project, even though it's jumping in line ahead of some of the others. When I have that ready to go, I can sew the binding on the Painted Ladies and get that one ready to be finished off. 

In other time-sensitive projects, I still need to finish sewing together the Gumballs quilt top. I selected that for March's OMG. There's still plenty of time, but I need to get going on that too. The top four rows of blocks are sewn together.

There are still two more rows of blocks to add, and then it will move to the quilts-to-be-quilted pile. I'll need to create a back for it, and I have some fabrics picked out from my stash.

Okay, so it's looking like a good day ahead. Seeing the sunshine this morning brightened my mood considerably. It'll be good to get outside and get a look at things.