Hello,
It was my Birthday this week and Eric got me these beautiful spring flowers a great card and took me to dinner. I had dessert and ice cream with the FAD gals, some cards from my aunts came in the snail mail, got lots of emails, a great phone call from my daughter and a text from my grand daughter. It was a great day for me.
The FAD gals meant and we had a good time. Sharon was doing the hem on her quilt – Moon River in the Rain. I like the way ones’s eye roams across the surface with this quilt.
I made a vow at to try to do a follow up on an idea from one of the magazines I get every month. This month I tried cheese cloth painting from Julie Booth’s article in the April May issue in the Quilting Arts magazine. It was fun and messy. I was trying to build up some more material for my next wild fire piece. I also just played- something most of us do not spend enough time doing.
Progress Report : Jacket 
I just keep working during the news on this project. I am adding the Turkey work on the last patch. It will be evaluation time again before I know if I am done or not.
Tee Shirt Quilt I am now starting to build units with this project. I cut 2.5″ and 4.5″ strips of various blues, browns and greens and connected them to the sides of the squares from the clothing. I do not want the work to have an up or down so I am placing the blocks together with the text reading from both directions. All the small units are built and now I am adding things together.
Scarp Happy. I am done with the assembly of the rows for this Scarp Happy quilt, But I am out of the strips of scarps that I use for the edges and boarders. Here is one of four bags full leftovers and “cut aways ” that I have to make those new strips with. So I guess I will have to get going and put some together for this quilt in order to finish it.
Blue Squares I was doing a bit of spring cleaning and I came across this stack of 42 squares. I do not remember what my intentions were- but I think I got frustrated when I reached this point because the squares are not all the same size. After giving it thought, I think I will make 45 more squares using the same theme and put them together as nine patches. I will make them all the same size by cutting down the big ones so everything goes together smoothly. All the new squares will be this new size to start with too! I guess this will be my new Daily Practice for a while.
Collections VI I have started stitching a few things to the base on this project. It is not getting much attention at the moment.
Icarus I put in a lot of time in on this work this week. I fused the body and legs to quarter inch batting. I have done colored pencil drawing and free motion thread painting on he work to create the shading. The top half is done. I have stitched down the wings so I am playing with position for the head and trunk at this point. The legs need the thread work before I can trim away the extra batting and add them to the surface. I am happy with the progress.
3 X 3 -Circular Thinking
This is a shot of the back of the work. I am done with the most of the embroidery work on this piece now and have moved to assembling the rows into a nine patch. The yellow with the red and blue print is sashing. The center row shows how the back of the work looks before I fuse a solid print onto it to stabilize the work and finish it. There are 27 sides to stitch down to finish this piece. 
Childhood Memories- the Grandfathers This project keeps evolving as I work on it. I have been looking at slides and photos of when I was a kid and noticed that mom seems to have dressed me in red a lot, so I will use that to help identify me in the works from now on. As the title suggests this piece is about my grandfathers. Grandpa Howard was my Mother’s father. I remember him always wearing Carhart pants and shirts in forest green. He had a very inquiring mind and a good sense of humor. He helped my parents build three of the four houses that we lived in as I grew up. He was helping Mom on the house in Columbus Junction, Iowa, the year I started Kindergarten. I come home from lunch every day. After eating together he and I would set in the red and silver print chair in our living room and he would read one chapter of Alice in Wonderland to me before I ran back to school in the afternoon.
Grandpa Merritt was a farmer. Except for Sundays, he always wore gray and white striped overhauls from Oskash and a woven hat. I remember enjoying running in the furrow of the plow behind the tractor. It was a red International Harvester. The feeling of the rich dark earth between my toes and the powerful earth smell always delighted me. I can’t remember how many springs I followed him as he plowed that 160 acre filed, planted it and harvested the bounty when fall came. He lovingly rotated his crops to keep the fields rich too.
Keep Creating
Carol
I e
Joyce 
