Spring Clean Up and More Quilt Progress

We've been pretty lucky weather-wise so far this spring. With some unseasonably warm days last week (in the 70's in March?? Usually it's still snowy!), we were actually able to get outside and start cleaning up the yard a bit. So we raked up some leaves (9 bags full, to be exact), and unveiled some of the landscaping.

I knew we had a few crocuses, as they had already made there way up through the covering of leaves, and I was excited to see some daffodils popping up too. I think there may be some irises and lilies as well, but it's a bit early to tell since they are just barely coming up out of the ground. It will certainly be fun to see what else we have growing.

Then over the weekend we got a reality check when the weather went back to more typical March temperatures (40's and even some snow this morning!). So I decided to go back to my big indoor project of the rainbow quilt. Getting it all laid out was quite the task (1008 squares and no definite plan for how they'd fit together...what was I thinking?!?). I had to shuffle the squares around a lot to get the stripes even and blending together nicely. And of course I hadn't cut quite enough squares, and of course I didn't have quite enough of one of the colors, so I had to go pick up one more fat quarter to fill in the gap. But all in all, I'm quite happy with the progress, and also with how much of my fabric stash I have been able to use in this project.

Anyhow, I did finally get it all laid out and have even started sewing! Yippee!! And in the process, little g is getting her first sewing lessons. She was very curious about my sewing machine and iron, and asked me all kinds of questions them, wondering how they worked. I guess it's time to find a simple sewing project for her to do and start learning some mad seamstress skills. But for now, she's happy to help line up the squares after I've sewn them together. It's nice having a little assistant!