Goofing off

Hello everyone! I am beyond happy to report that spring is arriving here in southeastern Wisconsin! All of a sudden we have temperatures in the 40s and rain in the forecast. It's like someone flipped a switch. And now we've even changed the clocks and sprung ahead, so it won't be long before we can burn the long underwear and break out some shorts. Which around here is usually when it hits about 50, so fingers crossed for this week!

I have been playing with fabric and making up some things even though I know I should be working on some half-finished projects that are still laying around here. (Remember the "frozen" quilt? Still in pieces!) One thing I made was another crumb block:

These are really, really hard for a traditionalist like me. A few people told me to start with a shape, so this one started with that blue triangle, not that you can tell. I am having a terrible time being comfortable with this method and I'd swear I heard my grandmother telling me to "straighten up that seam." I think one of my problems is that I associate the odd seaming and general "wonkiness" with sloppy work. But I have decided to go ahead and make some more of these and maybe--maybe--use them as centers for the sawtooth stars that Angela has going at soscrappy. Maybe.

Anyway, after that, I made a little bitty blue heart block to go with the mini red block:

Could use better pressing! These are both 4-1/2 inches right now. What am I going to do with them? Who knows?

During the big clean out of the the fabric closet, I found a bunch of stuff that I hadn't seen in a long time, including a whole bunch of blue, yellow, and green charm packs from various related Moda fabric lines. I decided to mix them all together and just stitch them into a simple quilt center just as they are, without additional cutting or fussing about it:

I arranged it sort of like a really chunky Boston Common pattern. The last two rows will be blue all around. I see now that I should probably separate out the light/medium blues and the medium/dark blues, just so it looks a bit better. I plan to stitch this all up and use it to practice quilting, then it will become a donation quilt. Some small person will love it.

And here's another one that was also hidden in the closet and is just getting stitched randomly:

I honestly have no idea where this came from!  I'm pretty sure someone gave up on it and gave it to me. It was in a project box with the Birds in the Air blocks all finished and trimmed, along with a bunch of extra fabric:

There were 36 of the Birds blocks, plus a bunch of greenish HSTs, some strips, and some yardage. I know for sure I did not make these. The fabric is grayed and is nothing I would have chosen at any point. Even when I was using a lot of Thimbleberries patterns I substituted brighter, clearer fabrics. Also, all of the blocks measure 4-1/2 inches but there are inconsistencies that would have made me crazy, like someone didn't bother to align the ruler and just plopped it on the block and trimmed. But they are ready to stitch, so who cares at this point? As long as the HSTs aren't next to each other, I think any problems will be hard to spot.

 

These are the selvages, so it is past time for this to be made up and go to a good home. Again, some tiny human will like it a lot, I'll bet. Any ideas from anyone out there what this was supposed to be?  I checked the website and there is nothing remotely similar and no pattern that I can find.

So, I've been goofing off and not focusing on my projects! But I think it's still working out okay. Hope you are having some fun this week too. And I hope it's warm where you are!

Linking to Linky Tuesday,  Fabric Tuesday, and Let's Bee Social.  Come join the party!