Weathering the cold

Hi everyone! Are you all used to the cold yet? I have no more jokes about the cold, so maybe I'm used to it, but I'm still counting the days until spring. (26 days!) It cannot get here soon enough. I know spring brings its own troubles, but at least we'll be able to go outside without the air hurting our faces.

We had a quiet weekend, but we did leave the house many times, once for pancakes. (Yum!) I even went out and walked a couple of miles on Saturday. (I hate the treadmill that much.) I did a lot of cutting for various projects and also made up this guy:

This is the frog block for Lorna's Elephant Parade quilt along at Sew Fresh Quilts. I think he's adorable. I've taken to calling him Fred the Frog. Fred may need an entire quilt of his own. First he needs a mouth, but I'm planning to do all the embroidery of the eyes and other details at once at the end.

One notion that I found really helpful for Fred's eyes and many other projects are these Perfect Circles:

These are Mylar circles in many sizes that you can iron over, trace, gather fabric around, what have you. These are super useful if you're no good at drawing circles, like I am. The set I have goes from about 1/4 inch circles up to about 2 inches, and there is a set for larger circles as well. I really like these. (I have no affiliation with anyone who makes or sells these, I just find them really helpful.)

I've also got some baby elephants to show you:

Cuteness! This is about half of the elephants I have to make. I've cut the others but haven't made them yet. Looking at the pattern, now that I have Fred and some baby elephants, I might just have enough for one row of the quilt. That's progress, huh?

I love the polka dot elephant! Right now I'm feeling like I might have to make another one of these with multi-colored elephants. I suppose I should finish this one first, but the pattern is really easy.

For the Kaleidoscope quilt, I'm making up these two side pieces this week:

Not stitched together yet, but not hard at all. After I finish these, the next step is 12 log cabin blocks, which should also go fairly quickly. There are really only three more steps until I can assemble a large part of it! I am happy with the progress I'm making here, even if some of it has been frustrating.

That's what I'm up to this week. I need to make the turtle block and finish those baby elephants, and then I'll  be all caught up on the Elephant Parade quilt. I'm also anxiously awaiting March's color announcement for RSC15. I'm hoping for purple--how about you?

Hope you are all caught up and doing well on your projects. One good side effect of all the snow and cold is that it forces us to stay inside and sew. Or clean, but who wants to do that?

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