Brights for a rainy day

It is a raw day here in the Midwest. Raining like crazy and only 43 degrees.  I feel kind of lucky, though, because there is much more severe weather in other parts of the country, and some people are really suffering. We're just cold and running the furnace later in the year than we should.

Last Saturday we cleaned out the garden. Because of the weather, we're at least 3 weeks behind in terms of the growing season. Usually I put in flowers the first weekend in May, but there is no way that's happening this year.  I don't think I've even seen any advertisements for annuals yet, and none of the usual garden centers is open yet. It's been an odd year.

Since it's so gross outside today, I feel like sitting in front of the Ott light and working on something bright. This is a cute pattern called "Afternoon on the Porch" by Jocelyn Ueng of It's Sew Emma that I saved from Quilt magazine.

(After a short search, it appears that this is from the November/ December 2012 issue. About time I got to it, isn't it?)

The pattern shows it in blue, yellow, green, and white prints. (I don't want to reproduce it here in case it's for sale.) As it happens, my older daughter gave me a small jelly roll of very bright batik prints and there were just enough to make this pattern. I mean just enough. There was no waste, and no leftovers!  I put them with a pale blue Kona solid.

I am actually incapable of following a pattern exactly. I always have to change it.  This could be the source of many of my problems. The pattern calls for sorting fabrics into lights and darks and alternating blocks and rows of light and dark. I did not do that. I just cut the jelly roll strips and stitched them randomly. Also, the pattern calls for 3 inch strips, and my jelly roll was 2 1/2. I just went ahead and used the 2 1/2 inch strips and cut the Kona fabric accordingly.  It's going to be narrower than the pattern quilt, but it doesn't really matter. So, I ended up with these blocks:

Pretty!

Today I'm arranging the blocks and stitching them together into a top. I don't want the same colors next to each other so there is a lot of rearranging going on.  Here's where I am so far:

That is bright! Perfect for a day like today. I'll be sewing this together tonight while the wind blows and the rain falls.

The other thing I did this weekend was ponder deeply the vintage linen blocks from my last post.  I know what I'm going to do with them, and it involves these fabrics and a template to be shown later:

Turns out that I don't have much in the way of purple scraps, so I will have to cut into those fat quarters. But it is definitely going to be worth it. I hope to show some progress this Friday.

Hope you are all weathering the storm! If I remember, I'll link up tomorrow with Connie at Freemotion by the River, a really creative blog with fantastic pictures. Everyone stay dry and be safe in this weird weather.