We had our April showers this week, and while the verse says that the flowers aren’t supposed to show up until May, Nancy of Patchwork Breeze, our Queen Bee for the Gridsters this month, asked us to make these giant blooms for her block…so I made her two, just because at this time of Being Shut In, why not? It’s the Totally Tulips Quilt from Missouri Star.
I also am attracted to happy, yellow posts, and this one from Karolina fit the bill. She brings string-pieced blocks to a new level with her photo styling.
More Instagram memes, which also remind me to be grateful that I’m esconced in a house with a sewing room with all that I need to sew.
I chose to put a little dart at the nose and chin of my accordian mask with ties. I had run out of elastic when I made this batch. Then the universe, and Elin, smiled on me, providing more elastic for more masks. While I am choosing to serve our country during this critical time by making a few masks, I think there are very many ways to serve. Maybe your best way is to stay home, or take care of your children, or bring a neighbor some groceries, or put something in the mailbox for your mailman (I usually put treats, but yesterday I left a mask), or treat the people with who you live with a little more patience, or call up someone who is alone and have a chat. We can all do our part.
Somewhere in this mess of a house, or in my garage somewhere I have a whole box of black pipecleaners that could be used for shaping in a face mask. Can I find them? No, but I found a box of my grandmother’s large silver hairpins, given to me upon her death several years ago. Thank you, Grandma, for doing your part in donating wires for face masks!
I updated my Face Mask page, after getting the official names for masks. I found another version on the Washington Post website, so now you have your pick of what you can make — if you need to for your family/friends/health care workers. Our county put a “wear a mask” mandate out there at the beginning of the week, the neighboring county did it yesterday, and Los Angeles will adopt this as well. If you don’t have a mask made of batik, then good-quality quilting cotton will do, and in a pinch, a bandana.
This hit a little close to home.
Our church is inviting everyone to fast and pray with us — or just think on it, if you aren’t affiliated — this week on Good Friday. Our main ideas are “that the present pandemic may be controlled, caregivers protected, the economy strengthened, and life normalized.” I personally can’t do much for the caregivers, health workers, scientists who are scrambling to find us treatments and vaccines, but I can pray and fast that the suffering may end soon, and that those who are on the front lines, supported.
Then I charged into Section Four — and why not? the whole sewing room is already a disaster — hand-sewing clamshells and fussy cutting blocks, and cutting multiples of the lower section strips but finally deciding, and now these sections are sewn together: 1 & 2 & 3 & 4.
I always look for handsewing in pieces of art, and found it in this image by David Habben, in a 
and these dimensions:
Refer to above photo for the rest of these 
