Thanks to all who entered the Paintbrush Studios giveaway for the Painter’s Palette Solids.  I used the Husband Random Number Generator, and he picked Lisa J. for the scraps and Susan H. for the Paint Chips.  It was fun reading all your comments!

I’m sure you’ve seen piggies flying across my screen on Instagram…piggies and more piggies.  It’s because I was Queen Bee for this month’s Gridster Bee, and all my beemates were quick and sent them right out.  So I honored them by sewing them all up into rows and getting the quilt top done.  (Don’t you hate it when you make blocks for bees and they all seem to go into someone’s bottom drawer, never to be seen again?  That happens, even to the best of us.)

I made a few more piggies, but imitated the heart in this curlicue pigtail from Carol.

I started to run into troubles because some piggies were facing left and some were facing right, and some were going uphill and some were going down, so my advice is have fun making them go left and right, but keep count, so you know how many you need of each. My husband made the suggestion to have the half-rows facing each other, so I did that in the middle of the quilt.

Another suggestion, from Mary, is to sew the grass on last, instead of first (like I wrote it in the tutorial).  She’s right.  I thought it wouldn’t matter much after the trimming, but it does.  So that’s why I added the scrappy strips of green underneath the rows of pigs.

And last, arrange your piglets up on the wall, decide on the balance/color,etc. THEN start tilting them uphill or down.  I also alternated the uphill/downhill at the start of the rows. It wasn’t that hard, if I just worked sequentially.

I started sewing the back together, then realized I was missing a beemate’s signature block.  It’s come to a halt while I wait for it to arrive, but it will be great to have them all.

These white flowers (smallish, about 1 1/2″ across) are all over my bushes out front, and the whole yard is blooming.  We’ve had a lovely rainy winter, so everything in the yard is very happy.  So am I, to see these!

And I did a little spring shopping at our local brick and mortar quilt shop, finding some backing for the En Provence mystery quilt (still in process) on the sale shelves.

For April’s Gridster Bee block, Nancy of Patchwork Breeze drew up her own design, and asked us to make it up in some bold large-scale prints.  This was a paper-pieced block in some places, and just plain pieced, in other places, and I think they turned out great.

This book will open your eyes up to color and piecing possibilities for New York Beauties, coupled with Flying Geese.  I love it.  You can find the author, Carl Hentsch on Instagram.  I’m in love with another one of his quilts:

It’s slightly fuzzy because I screen-shotted it from Instagram.  What talent!

And that’s all.  Happy Spring!!