Solved!

Remember this block? The one I did for our GridsterBee this year? And how I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it, nor could anyone I talked to, nor did Bren, the Queen Bee?

This is the pattern Woven, available for free on the Robert Kaufman website. It was designed by Elizabeth Hartman, using one of her fabric lines. I’d also made it before, for Mary of NeedledMom:

And here is a picture of Mary’s blocks, all laid out:

Okay, that mystery solved, and the Heart’s Garden Mystery QAL put to rest, what’s next?

June blocks, from Leila Gardunia, are a series of scrappy triangles, with white-on-white as the opposite side. Leila provides a free download of 52 of these blocks, plus a few bonus ones– a fun pattern to keep around when you have too many scraps and need a way to make them useful.

My friend Jean sent me a photo of her finished Polaroid quilt. Some time ago (2013), we’d had a Polaroid swap, and she was happy to send me a finished photo. The directions to make those little blocks can be found in this post. I don’t care when you start a quilt, it’s the finish that needs celebrating and I celebrate this!

I started this: Ring Cycles on Steroids, a version of a popular quilt made huge by Lorena of Sydney. She sent me the pattern ages ago, and I finally started putting it together. I do love me a nine-patch block.

I also cut out a dress. That is all.

Since bashing on Instagram is a favorite thing in this house — we love it and we hate it — I was interested in this advice from The Washington Post in their IG feed and more on the stranglehold they have on our data in an article on Privacy Policies. I’ve yet to convert my feed over, but do try to keep my eyeballs-on-screens time down to a manageable level.

Culture Department: This is the stage where the Ukrainian band, Kalush, won the Eurovision Song Contest. Now that song is stuck in my head, and I don’t even speak Ukranian. One of the members is known as Carpet Man, and he is covered in a patterned balaclava that looks like patterned carpet. You can listen (and see Carpet Man) in this video, a song that is a combination of rap, a plaintive melody and a chorus that is all too catchy. Be sure to admire the man with the one of the traditional Ukrainian woodwind instruments, a telenka.

And no, I haven’t forgotten about this horrendous week of news we’ve had, and the video that sums up all the horror of what our children are exposed to. I remember hanging out at school, playing ball on the schoolyard, and absolutely nothing like what this young woman in the video described. I voted by mail this week, giving a NO vote to a particular leader who didn’t represent my views on this, or on pandemic caution. I urge you to vote in your Primary if your state is having one, or will have one, and I thank those who did vote. Let’s leave our children and grandchildren a world where they have the freedoms we did.

Maybe it was in response to the oppressing sadness that I designed this happy little pattern? I don’t know, but for four Wednesdays in June I’ll put up a new block. Thanks to the nice comments you’ve sent to me, and hope you have been able to download it from my pattern shop (link to PayHip is on upper right).
Take a breath, and quilt!
