One more day to normalcy

Today is the last day of the kids' Easter holiday, which means that in theory anyway, I should get some of my sewing time back soon. That said, I did get a bit of time this morning - more on that later. But first, the post.

These lovely lovely things are the blocks from the black and batik swap - I swapped 12 nine inch blocks (the blessed ball and chain blocks) and three 18 inch blocks - so here's what I got in return - twelve nine inch blocks of an amazing variety and three 18 inch blocks, which I adore, especially the top left one, which is lovel. I might have to try that block myself for something else, we'll see.



I also got the bits above in the post - some more black scraps, this time from my friend Kandy, and some batiks that I ordered from Teresa (these came with the batik blocks, as she was the hostess for that swap).

I did also do a little sewing, as I mentioned above. I helped Sarah put two sides of the border on her quilt, but then she got distracted by girls on rollerblades at the front door (sounds like an 80s song, I know). I also cut out and sewed together a number of black squares for that project, including attaching some to actual blocks - this photo shows five of the on the floor (not sewn together, just laid out). There are 63 blocks, so I still have a ways to go. But I think it's going to work well. Whew.



I also did a little work on some postcards - some more stitching on the Earth Day cards - finished the roots up and did about half of the flower stems. Then it's just flowers, maybe a little sky, and the finishing. I say "just", but well, I'm making progress, at least.



And I worked on these cards, too. After a lot of back and forthing about what I was going to do for an open theme swap in the group EuroQuilt, I decided to go with something fairly traditionally quilty - a mini string pieced card. These cards are made from two 3.5" string squares (each) which are then cut in half and sewn back together to make the rough zig zag. Each pair had the same starting strip across the centre of the string square block. The strings are no wider than 1.5" to start, and most of them narrower than that. I think it works pretty well - not sure what else I am going to add, maybe some buttons.