Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Take It Further - April Block

Still trying to catch up around here with all the organizational activities and stitching obligations. Today, while G was away for the whole day playing golf, I managed to move my computer system into the workroom onto my new much-smaller desk. Talk about crowded! Let's call it cozy, okay?

So, I finished the April TIF block a few days ago. If you click on the picture here, you can also see more detailed close ups of the 4 corners and center of the block in my Flickr pictures.

The JBM fabrics in this block are in the center and at the lower left. The center spider web this month is made of copper metallic machine thread and Mr. Spidey is brown made with one strand of cotton floss.

At upper left is some simple silk ribbon irises. Simple is the only SRE I do. Our iris gardens began blooming in April much to the delight of the hummingbirds who also came home to almost daily drain the feeders in April.

The fabric at upper right was not only chosen because it was one of April's colors, but also because I thought it could represent G's vegetable garden which he planted in early April. In fact, just yesterday, Memorial Day, we harvested our first squashes - 2 eight ball zucchini and 1 yellow zucchini. Now the fun begins trying to keep up with the squash production. No tomatoes yet, but the bushes are 3 feet high already! Squash and tomatoes are the only things G grows. When I used to do the garden we had beans, beets and radishes, but he only grows what he likes to eat!

The birthday image at lower left was a freebie posted by Janet of Vintage Vogue and seemed most appropriate because on the last day of April I turned 66. One year on Medicare and I'm still kickin'.

On the lower right corner I tried to reproduce a seed pod from Mabel, our Maple tree. When we moved into this house, Mabel did little to shade our front window in the hot afternoons of summer. Now she is huge and every year in April she showers us with the "twirly bird" seed pods that the girl used to call "helicopters" and loved playing with.

The center stitching looks a little wierd I know, but I was doing my best to camoflage the fact that the center piece of fabric was not cut straight. You might not see it, but it's the only thing I could see after the block was pieced. Too lazy to repiece the block, I set about trying to hide the fact. There's not much special stitching on this month's block. I played a bit the my fly stitches on top of the birthday corner and the green line of stitching over Mabel is a stitch I found on an antique crazy quilt this month that I had not seen before.

Enjoy the close ups!

Stitch On!

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