Having way too much fun

 I am beginning to wonder how I will know when I am done.

As long as there are little spaces, there is possibility for adding embellishments.


The pocket is now in place but it is really way too big. I am thinking of adding a button loop at the top and a button below the frog to keep things from falling out.

I might have a few nice pearl buttons left from my button blanket that will work.

I needed to quilt the area underneath the pocket but that work will never show.

I decided to use a "morning star" and "evening star" design that I have used in in the past on a star quilt.

The variegated thread  was rather fun to use and the cloud design is in the same pale blue that I used on the back.

I chose a herringbone stitch on the owl's tail feathers, but since the stitches were rather wide and might get caught on something, I back-stitched over all the places where they crossed.

There are a few open spaces left for some quilting or stitchery but they will have to wait for another day.

Yesterday Norie and Paul's sister and I met for a meal to celebrate the second anniversary of Paul's passing. It is kind of a special tradition in Japan and we met at the same place as last year.

Don't we look well fed?

We even had room for a bit of dessert.

Norie took this picture outside the restaurant where they have a small weeping cherry.

This is one of the trees we are considering to plant in Paul's memory in the chapel garden of ARI (Asian Rural Institute)
that Paul supported for so many years,  a school where community leaders from mainly Asia and Africa come to improve their leadership skills and knowledge of sustainable farming and grassroots community development.


ARI's motto, "That We May Live Together" is found in every aspect of community, food, labor, diversity, and mutual respect for servant leadership.

OK, enough for now. Cub pack meeting tonight and I had better get packin'!

Attention to detail

Here is a picture of a real Mola that has been in my collection for many years.  After assembling my pseudo-mola vest, I have begun to focus on the details and looked to this piece for inspiration.

The zig-zag lines are made with a single thread in a chain stitch. Those chains are really tiny with about eight links in a one centimetre length. The running stitches are done with two strands of thread and are three stitches to one cm. There are also tiny Y stitches in the neck area that I want to try. Those are with one thread and spaced about four per cm.

This is my attempt.

My stitches are about six per cm. and I doubt I can make them any smaller. (or feel a need to do so)

I am glad for my collection of needles that includes some S. Thomas & Sons that are short and fine but yet have an eye large enough to get the thread through easily.

Of course, I did not practice first but just jumped right in (and as usual, learning as I go).

I was able to find the hidden fabric and add a border of patchwork to the bottom edge of the back.

It still needs a bit of in-the-ditch quilting.

I decided that with the owl and turtle, I will stick to Native American designs.

Being originally from Ohio, I am preferring those designs from the Northeastern  Woodlands.

This area on either side of the turtle has been quilted with light blue thread.

I plan to fill the larger areas with this kind of quilting and then add detail as time allows. That way, I might even be able to call this a finish before long ... with maybe room for more creative embellishment as time goes on.

The pocket is yet to be assembled and added.  (But I still have a bit of time until "due date").

Last year at the quilt show, I received a spool of Coats "multicolor' hand quilting thread and I am eager to try that out at one point. I think it will work well on this navy background.

So, with the baby quilt on the way to it's new owner, I now have another warm item on my lap to work on. Pretty good timing for this cold blustery weather...

Making up for lost time

If I am going to finish this project by the end of this month, it is time to stop procrastinating and get going.

I think by now I have an idea of the basics of Mola and that was more or less the goal of the year-long challenge. Basically, the colorful reverse applique designs created by the Cuna indians of the San Blas islands along the Atlantic coast of Panama, are intended to be worn in clothing.

In studying up on the technique, I read these words ... "Every mola is a thoughtful statement of the creator's personality and relationship with her culture". Therefore, rather than copy directly from the Cuna designs, I decided to make this statement completely mine.

The butterfly was once a symbol of the hidden Christians. 50+ years ago when I came to Japan. there were many young people wearing big fancy crosses. They were only an ornament with no meaning at all. It was then that I decided to join my husband's ancestors as a hidden Christian and exchanged by silver Celtic cross for a tiny gold filagree butterfly. My goal was to express my faith by my actions and deeds. Thus the butterfly. 

Then, there is the frog. He too is reminding me to Fully Rely On God.

The sun was my first attempt where I learned the most as what to do and what I should be doing. I'm sure it will remind me to remain sunny, even in the face of adversity, and learn by my mistakes. I intend this to become a pocket.

The owl and the turtle are the real me ... a relationship with my own culture, so I decided not to include distracting colorful bits. I was hoping to add a strip of quilting across the bottom but since I "cleaned up" for Christmas visitors, I have not been able to find where I hid those pieces. I am still hoping to locate them before the final assembling.

The Owl and the Turtle are more native American designs. As a child, my name was "turtle song", called by my great grandmother. I still remember how happy I was at around June 1944, when I was presented with my own Bible and opened it to the first page of the Song of Solomon, reading ...

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone: 

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; ....

Could that be part of my love of singing?

Driving to my first home, what was going before me but a turtle ... right down the middle of the street!

The Owl is my "spirit helper". A number of my friends have heard my owl stories. Certainly when I was a child camping in the woods with my family, having a screech owl calling above my tent each night was scary, even when my great grandmother told me it was watching over me.  Over the years, wherever I have traveled and lived and camped, an owl has found me bringing greetings and even aide.

I am thinking of adding a bit of stitchery on some of these. I have begun quilting the patchwork parts in the ditch using navy thread which will not show in the back. The patchwork and quilting is also a part of who I am.

So, though the mola origin is with the Cuna indians, This project has evolved to meet me where I am in life.

I am still experimenting on the finishing and hope I will have time to get my act together. In the cold weather we are having now, one can't have too many warm wearables.

Where does time go?

Well, I do know where some of it went. The weekend of the 30th was the fall cub rally. Since Nikko went along, it involved driving, and though I have driven there a number of times in the past, the roads keep changing as well as the access to the campsite which used to be part of some military housing area. The trip, even with the navigator on my i-phone, took about 4 hours.

A new Stewardship banner has to be made and I have not been happy with the theme, so getting my act together has involved some meetings and discussions and sketches. In the end, I do not have a program to design graphics on my laptop. I used to turn the plans over to my husband for that aspect.

Finally this week I am getting some help from someone who can do that part ... but it means the design is getting changed too. Hopefully Sunday we will look at all the plans and decide so I can get going on this one.

Monday was a holiday, so no school.

I still had to go out at 4:am for "rice delivery". Actually, since the church kitchen is involved in the basement renovations, the team could not meet to make the onigiri and what I delivered were packs of 5 small bean-jam buns.
After a summer break, it was interesting that on the first day of deliveries, those homeless spotted me ... that old lady with the white dog has got the goods ... and all 30 packs found welcoming hands.

We took advantage of the day off for our Halloween cookie factory.

Aunt Marie had sent some fancy sprinkles from Boston and we made good use of the variety.
We had a skype visit with daughters and cousins in Oregon.

Leia went home that evening with two boxes of fancy cookies to share with her friends.

The day went by so quickly.

I have to admit, I spent (wasted) so much time looking for things that I put somewhere two weeks ago when "tidying up" for the quilt group visit.

Some things I just have not been able to find ... mostly things that had been living on my coffee table right under my nose for the entire summer.
Even fabrics I had laid out to use on my mola have walked off.

I added a bit of fill-in design but I spent a lot of time un-sewing things I didn't like after putting them on.

This weekend is the boy scout friendship Patrol-o-ree with Japanese scouts and before running off there, I have my pack meeting.

Choir will sing at the early service Sunday and I will be very lucky to have even one back-up tenor ... and even luckier if that person comes for rehearsal before-hand.


Fall is a busy time of year with scouting starting up, school starting up, choir practice picking up, rice delivery starting up,  and meetings for planning of all kinds of things. The sweet olive that perfumes the air took clues from the spider lilies and is dropping its tiny orange flowers weeks before it usually blooms. The toad lily has buds so still something to look forward to beforeI begin sweeping up fallen leaves.

Mr. Frog got some company

The light border on the dragonfly's front wings doesn't show much considering how hard it was to sew. Now I have to start thinking about the background. When I set it next to the butterfly, the balance is way off.

I am not sure where I want to go with this.

Maybe I will play around with the owl and turtle while I think it over....

Frogs like rainy days

The rain began as Nikko and I were walking home from our morning outing... and it has been raining off and on all day ... a perfect time to spend on a bit of Mola stitchery. As you may notice, I gave in to calls from my scrap box to be included in the challenge.
I have never seen a mola using prints but as long as I am making up my own designs, I may as well use some scraps from my stash. This is never going to look like a traditional mola anyway.

In the late afternoon, Nikko and I took a walk to the next station to find a few things the local shop doesn't have stocked. Since it was raining, I tied Nikko under the roofed area outside the store while I shopped. When I came out, her fan club had gathered, and as I was getting ready to untie her, a lady came running up so happy to see her saying how glad she was and how worried she had been since it had been such a long time.

As it turns out, she often met up with Paul and Nikko in that same spot and had been looking there for the last year and a half. Even more surprising, she reached in her shopping bag and pulled out a package of doggy treats she had been carrying each trip to the store, hoping to see Nikko again.
Well, Nikko was delighted to see her and performed a "lie-down-roll-over " plus a "wait" and "itadakimasu" to get one of the treats. The lady commented that Nikko is looking more slim and fit. Yes, I am not as generous with "people-food" as Paul had been.

The rain had let up a bit and I said thank you to one happy lady and returned home with one happy dog ... and the rest of the package of treats. (those I will stuff in her kong when I need to leave her alone for a while).

Hopping along ...

The Mola is getting a bit of action.

Luckily, the butterfly is hiding behind the flowers over on the sofa. It might be a bit too big for the frog anyway.

I am thinking of using this leaf as a pattern since it seems to fit the area.

My nest challenge is deciding between applique and reverse-applique to decorate the frog.

And, maybe the frog needs a target like a bee ... but I would rather have him work on eliminating the swarms of mosquitoes encouraged by Sunday's rain.


Over the weekend I did a bit of piecing and it was a refreshing change. I am looking forward to the time I can add some needlework. . .


And watching Queenie's blog for possible stitches that might add to the design ... and be easy enough for me to figure out.

Time flies !!!!

After about a month of rain followed by weeks of super heat and humidity, we had about two cool days.
Now it is hot and humid again and the plants seem to be confused.

Just Monday, on my way to school, I saw the buds of the spider lilies beginning to pop up.
Tuesday they were already open and declaring it is fall.

Meanwhile, the Autumnal equinox they are known to proclaim, won't be here until the 23rd.

I walked around to the east side of the house  and those were also in bloom.


Because of "set-back" the garden here is only six inches wide and the flower pots are there to keep neighbourhood cats from using the space as a litter box.

The lilies are coming up behind.

This morning they have been joined by the red ones.
Just as spring marches in one flowering plant at a time, autumn usually proceeds in a similar way ...
The gardenias second blooming, indicating nights becoming cooler, then the Higanbana (spider lilies), then the hototogisu or toad lily, and in mid to late October, the sweet olive (Kinmokusei and Ginmokusei ) perfuming the air.

I admit I look forward to autumn weather  (not the typhoons, but the cooler nights and blue skies.
I even noticed, looking out the third floor windows at school, that the leaves on the dogwoods lining the street are beginning to turn red. Last year's Goldenrod now has a house going up on the site and the pampas grasses are still thinking it is mid summer.

The mola grew a couple of flowers to keep the butterfly busy ... if he can find them through the labyrinth.

Friday ... and my quilt group is close on the heels ... it is a very small group but if I don't get busy quickly, there won't even be a place to sit ... nothing but dust and dog hair ... and to top it off, while I was gone on Monday, Nikko chewed up a bag of something. I lock her out of the livingroom but she found something ... maybe flower seeds in a baggy, and there was torn up plastic spread all over when I went up to bed that night and she had been having bowel troubles ever since and leaving messes here and there.
Time to set handwork aside and tackle the giant spoon that has stirred up my living quarters! I wish cleaning would go as fast as the flowers this year.

More mola ?

Friday was my first Cub Pack meeting of the school year so I had to come up for a plan of a game the boys could do while the adults got organized.

I decided to make a getting-to-know-you BINGO game.
I haven't done that for many years so first I made a template for A4 paper and made six copies. Then made a list of 25 questions to learn about those in the room.

I put a place in the middle for the scout to sign his name and then arranged the questions differently on each form.

After filling in all the pages, I went to the convenience store and made ten copies of each sheet. Then I piled them up in a way that when handing them out, each had a better possibility of getting a variety of pages.

The rules were that each person could only sign once, and I told the boys to look carefully for harder questions and get those filled first. One was "someone who has climbed Mt Fuji" and I asked off hand who had done that and other than me there were three others in the room.
There were plenty of easy questions  like plays a sport or has a pet.
After going over the rules, I asked if there were any questions ... sure enough, my #1 questioner wanted to know if the scout had signed the center, could he also sign one other of the questions. Good point! If you come to the end and still don't have any bingos, sure, you can sign if the question suits you. One of the questions was someone who knows an Eagle Scout. There were adult Scouters there wearing the Eagle knot on their shirts so I was surprised that was a hard one.
In the end, one boy got 7 bongos on his sheet. There were  only a few boys who didn't get any.

Most of my day that wasn't taken up in preparation, was taken up by the meeting or travel. The long trip managed to finish up all but the body on my butterfly mola ... and that part got added this morning.
I am planning to add embroidery in the end. The more of this I do, the more I realize I am more of a patchwork kind of person.

Snack time !!!

Actually, it was the mosquitoes doing all the snacking.

Each morning, Nikko and I take a walk through the park. I carry along a plastic bag which I use to pick up Nikko's morning deposit ...

Then I fill the rest of the bag with weeds pulled along the way.

The park is way too big to cover everything but the areas that are planted with nice golf-course grass were looking very sad when I returned from my summer adventures.

When the weeds are young, it is very easy to pull them straight up from between the grass and they come roots and all. As they get bigger, it is still easy to get a good hold for pulling ... BUT ... about two weeks ago, the park people came by with weed-whackers and cut everything off at grass level.

Now there is not much to get hold of for pulling and all the mosquitoes that were hiding in the grass are desperate to find something tasty to nibble. I did manage to fill the bag on the left today with my arms flailing around like a windmill to chase off the critters.

The weeds that were cut have new sprouts and if you look closer at the five ones laid out here, they do not only spread by seed ... Long white roots shoot out in all directions. The white bag is now filled with three days worth of weeds ... and maybe a few smashed critters ... and will go out in tomorrow's trash.

The mola got a little more attention.

I have some light blue to add ... and then some area applique and some planned stitchery.

I am thinking of waiting to add those things until I have the backing decided.

I don't want to purchase any more fabric so I am hoping something in my acquired stash will work.



Time to go up and sort through my boxes ... and maybe replenish the coffee removed by the mosquitoes ... no wonder they are so hyper!

Beauty treatment

The other day, when the newspaper guy came to collect for my paper delivery, He asked me about my front "garden" which I usually take care of from season to season.

Since I had been away for a month, the Vine-leafed Maple had shot up in front of the second floor window and the plum tree was against the house.

Also the lace-leafed maple had become so thick with branches that the plants on either side were almost completely hidden. Knowing which branches to prune out is tricky with maples.

The guy knew that I usually did the trimming but he made me an offer that would have been hard to refuse ... less than what I have paid in the past for professional pruning which results were not to my liking.

This guy brought a young man around as promised this morning at 10:00 and the three of us discussed what I wished to have improved.

I wish I had "before" pictures to show. What an improvement!

All the cuttings were carefully cleaned up and taken away in his truck. (I think last time I was cleaning up cuttings in the under-brush for weeks).

Just as he finished, it began to rain.

I would say the garden will be very happy. I had him leave the gardenia nearest the gate as it had buds getting ready to bloom, and I can trim that bush when the flowers are finished

 Meanwhile the mola got a bit more attention.

This is not coming out as I had planned. I think it is rather difficult to figure out the order of cutting and turning when the technique is completely unfamiliar as it is hard to see as far ahead as needed when planning.

Maybe I should have gotten a few books with instructions before just jumping in.

The next baby quilt is still being arranged.
The I-Spy blocks are only four inches square so I am going to need to mark and cut more ...

And then, the sashing strips ... I will need to lay it all out to adjust the balance of color so I really can't begin to sew until it is all arranged and pinned in strips.

Sometime this week I am planning to go to a quilt show. As I recall, this show does not allow pictures but it is a very good show and one of my quilt group friends has a featured part.

Here's hoping the rain does more to lower the temperature than to add to the humidity. The garden will be happy and I am hoping I will be too. At least I have something pretty to look at.

Feeling lazy

With a string of holidays lined up, I have been just puttering around ... not doing much of anything and a lot of nothing.

We have had a few nice sunny days and that kind of weather lures me outside.

I had plants that needed re-potting and a bit of weeding and trimming of bushes

The little carp streamer has been dancing in the breezes outside my front door.
This one I selected is less fancy than some of the dyed fabrics. The eyes are just fused with big blanket stitches around the border and the tail has also been turned with large stitches.

I wanted to get some pictures of traditional carp streamers flying and the best place for that is a nearby school ground but with school out for Golden week, they may have been taken down early.

I do have a set of traditional carp in my cupboard but since that door is so hard to put back in place, I have hesitated to take them out. When the kids were small we set up a tall bamboo pole topped with a set of wheels that rotated in the wind and a long banner at the top. The big carp was for the father and the smaller ones for the sons.

The newspaper had a picture of a wide field of carp being flown in Tohoku, one for each child lost in the earthquake and tsunami. Tanya had better luck finding carp streamers to photograph. Look here!

The iris outside the front gate didn't bloom last year but seem to be making up for lost time.

This picture is a bit washed out as the tips of the petals are a soft purple.

he lilies are getting ready for a show and this year there are a lot of volunteers as well.

The gardenia is setting out plenty of buds but it is looking a bit sad because of the leaves that had a caterpillar attack in the fall.



Nikko has gone into her mega-shedding mode ...
The one where the under hair comes out in big fluffy tufts.
I'm sure it was kicked off by my heavy cleaning attack on Tuesday, running the vacuum and dusting and polishing all over the house.

I should take her out in today's breeze and give her a work-over but she really hates being brushed or combed. I recall with longing, my Mom's dog, Kimberly, who used to throw herself in front of the vacuum cleaner to get a going over before you could do the floors. Nikko has issues with the vacuum too. Now she leaves the room when it comes out but several years ago she escaped to another floor entirely until called down after the offending item was safely put away.

 The mola is moving slowly. It is rather strange with the dark green in the edge rather than the lighter one. The light has a slight print and I wanted it to show more but neither really shows up as planned.

Rather than take it all apart and start over, I will keep at it. Can I blame the turtle for being slow?

Tomorrow the choir is gathering to attend the funeral of the mother of our long-time organist. Because of the long string of holidays there will be no choir practice in the evening.
We are working on the music for "choir Sunday", coming next month. These pieces make me feel like I have been doing verbal push-ups. There is a challenge to memorize  the pieces, and for most music, that is easy for me ... but these pieces are challenging just looking at the music and sometimes I have to decide if I will be watching the notes or the words because they are racing by so fast I can't see both. I had better do some of those push-ups at home. (not as easy as quilting while watching TV).

Catching up

Sometimes it seems the faster I run, the behinder I get.

It seems every weekend I have to pick and choose my priorities and something is bound to get left in the dust. Today there is a boy scout Merit Badge day, and probably the first one in years I have missed. That is also doubled up with a outdoor leader training that I have also declined to help on.

I don't know who is going to do the nature section of that training but the materials I have assembled over nearly 40 years would not work at the chosen location. In addition, the training which is supposed to include an overnight has been shortened to part of one day. How can we teach scouts to go by the rules when leaders (and the executive in charge) are cutting corners? Yes, he gets more "trained leaders" to his credit but... which comes to merit badge requirements ... where a scout is expected to "tell" or "explain", the leader does the talking and signs the kid off.

Anyway, Sunday afternoon and evening I have a pinewood derby to manage ... with a new track and inexperienced leaders. I think for one weekend, that is enough. And ... next weekend is the district pinewood derby but since the "Gate List" is closed (as it is on a military facility) none of the civilian packs will be able to attend ... they need to know the names and details of attendees (winners) 60 days out... before we even run our own pack events.

So ... besides whittling my derby car, what have I been up to?

Blue and White

At the end of each teaching day, I walk downhill to the train station at 

"the Ju-ban"

That is, as in Azabu-juban.

Along the way I often have stopped at the shop. Blue and White, 

not so much as to shop but to have a bit of a visit and look around.

This little shop with it's charmingly decorated show window has been an icon in the area for many years.

Recently, the "Peacock" grocery store on the property was taken out of the building and new shops were put in.

Amy Kato, who owns the Blue and White was told ... after all these years ... that her shop does not meet building standards and was to be torn down so she had to move. 

As I have said, that shop is an icon of the area  ... so where was she to move too? Well, the shop closed and the building was torn down ... but a sign on the fence declares it will re-open in April on the second floor of the renovated building. I do not know all the details but I hope they will get a show window and be visible still to passers by.

I have known Amy since the early 70's as her husband and mine worked at the same company. I wish I could afford a big bouquet of flowers for the opening, but when life gives you scraps, you make quilts instead. 

Thus two mug rugs ... hoping they can use them for their tea or coffee or even a glass of celebratory wine. 

  

For Amy, a tai, or sea bream, regarded as a celebratory fish and is often served at ceremonious occasions. In the upper corner, a birds-in-the-air block representing the new location on the second floor, and in the lower corner below the waves are a daruma wishing good fortune ... always rising from a fall ... a good luck cat, (I think those are coins it is tossing), and a mallet of good fortune. Amy's shop is known to hold lessons in sashiko but since I have never taken any, ordinary quilting will have to do.

For her assistant, I can see her jumping up from her work ... done in bits and pieces ... while greeting friends (often with a hug in my case). Over the years bits and pieces of yukata fabric from the shop have gone into ASIJ quilts and also my stash, so her little mat will get a selection. 

For some reason I had trouble making the binding behave but at least I had enough to bind two 8x11 inch mats. 

As for mola, it is now creeping along at a turtle's pace. Under the green is a lighter green ... kind of reverse of the regular molas that usually put the lighter colors on top.

I'm not at all certain where I am going with this and maybe that is why it is moving so slowly.

My original drawing crawled off to some unknown place.

In most cases when this happens, the minute I go to the trouble of doing a task over, the original reappears. BUT, this time it seems to be gone for good ... along with the color plan. This is definitely not what I had in mind at the beginning, but now I hate to start over once more.  I guess if this is a learning experience, I should be happy ... that is ...  if I really have learned how NOT to make mistakes.

Tokyo Dome spin-off

In one of Tanya's earlier posts, she introduced Fumiko Nakayama with some lovely pictures.

Nakayama-sensei is known for her Mola-style quilting.

Though from, I believe, Kyoto, her classes are taught around Japan and I met some of her deshi from both Kobe and Tokyo.

Several "Sensei" had special booths to show off their work and meet up with quilters curious about learning more.

 This was the quilt made by Nakayama-sensei in the exhibit set aside for teachers.

Title, "Flower the Macrocosm"


This is not a small wall quilt but quite large and full of colorful detail.

It has already been mentioned that the wallpaper in this section and the lighting with shadows did not set off the quilts to their best.

This quilt missed the shadow problem but the wallpaper hardly does much to set it off. Still, a lovely colorful piece of work!


In her booth, Sensei had several copies of books she had written on Mola and some demonstration pieces.
There was also a shop selling her things in the area where all the shops were located...
Among them fabrics and kits with instructions...
Not cheap!

Her demonstration piece showed the layers basted and then cut and needle turned.


As Tanya has mentioned, the three of us decided on a challenge of trying Mola and making something using that technique.



We had gone by the shop and looked over the kits, then decided to go it alone.

Now, do I think I can figure out how to do something like this?

I thought I might have a magazine or two with Mola designs for inspiration but I am yet to find them on my shelf and anything I could locate was all in Japanese.

Guess I really am on my own.

Well, I drew up a plan and traced it onto a piece of navy scrap fabric.
Then I made a sandwich like the one I had seen and basted it together.

Well, this is what I came up with...

On Tuesday afternoon, a day before the closing, I went back to the Tokyo Dome to see if I could get a few pictures without waiting for the crowds to move.

I stopped off at Nakayama-sansei's booth to ask her how to turn that yellow into borders, showing the red underneath.

Kindly, she did nor say, "you stupid fool, you are doing this all wrong!"
but she pulled out fabric and scissors and thread, giving me a one-on-one demonstration of putting the under fabric on first and turning that, then putting the top fabric in place and turning the top fabric, leaving a nice neat frame in each space.

She did not tell me to go and buy something from her shop and read the instructions but patiently showed me how I should have done it.

I have to admit I am quite impressed with the lesson I got and the patient friendly way it was delivered.

But, now I have a piece of yellow sun and I do not want to take it out and start over so....

Last night, after a busy day at school, with the cold wind rattling the windows,
I curled up on the sofa and attacked the problem head-on the "wrong" way.


With the navy stitches already in place, there isn't much room to turn the yellow under ... but there really isn't a very wide strip of yellow to begin with. The yellow rays are only about 3/8 of an inch in width.

I think I will have a bit of fun along with the frustration.

Meanwhile, the table runner for the conference speaker is now in the hands of it's new owner.

I finished off the spare pieces for a runner, now on my coffee table.

(being motivated to remove the Christmas/New Years one still in that spot).

As I was  thinking of my Mola and the Christmas present for Norie yet to begin and a whittling project I wanted to start this month ...

along comes the news that a member of our church choir is expecting a baby in MARCH!

Not a lot of time ... and I need to make a baby quilt for all the choir to sign.

Last night ... among other things ... I dug into my kid-friendly prints and pulled out a pile of pre-cut blocks.
Today I laid them out on the dog hair covered carpet and played around with possible arrangements for an I-Spy quilt ... (no time to gather alphabet  prints .. though mola letters might give me more experience.

Tonight I will present my plan to the choir president.

Here's to all my friends who use those things called "Patterns"!
My quilting seems to be just like my life... a bit backward, and definitely "Plan as you go".