not in my quilting projects, in my postings! I've been busy, despite the winter weather. In addition to working on my Scrap Addicts projects and the raffle quilt, there were some events which took me away from my sewing machine.
The concert chorale that I sing with performed two concerts of Johannes Brahms' Ein Deutsch Requiem at the beginning of the month, so that required a lot of practicing. Last weekend, I went with my husband on a buisness trip to Maryland and Delaware, where I caught up with some old friends and made some new ones. Then I spent a couple days with my dad when he had cataract surgery. I also started my spring cleaning.
Did I say SPRING? Yep, Spring is finally starting to show up here in SW PA! It has been a loooong, loooong winter! Today, I saw the first crocus. I normally see crocuses on my front bank in February, but not this year. The front bank was covered with snow up until just a few days ago. Here is the picture I took of that lonely little crocus that is finally popping up.
Here is what my front bank usually looks like in the middle of March:
That picture was taken on March 24, 2012. Here is what the same spot on my front bank looks like today:
Needless to say, it's going to be at least a few weeks before I see those jonquils in bloom!
In a previous post, I mentioned that I volunteered to make a raffle quilt for a convention in August. It will be all red, white and blue stars, I now have 30 blocks done out of the 72 that I'll need. I laid some of them out on my 'design wall' (aka living room floor...) Yay, progress! I think that I will set them like pictured because I like the dark/light checkerboard effect.
I like the layout, but I'm not sure that I will want to match all those points because I already have enough grey hair! (Covered over by highlights and lowlights, courtesy of my favorite beautician, ;->). So I'm thinking about a a sashing of some kind. The current plan is to use 2 inch sashing and probably cornerstones. Another issue is that half of the blocks will have a light/white background, and the other half will be split between red and blue backgrounds, so I'm not sure what color I should use for the sashing.
Someone suggested gold, but I'm not sure I want to introduce another color. If I use red, white, or blue, some of the blocks will appear bigger than the others. That might not be a bad thing, but I'll have to try it to see if I like the effect. Another possibility is a small print that is predominantly white, but has red or blue in it. So it would read darker than the white, but lighter than the red or blue. In fact, a couple of the stars that I've already made have such a background. See the one in the second row from the bottom, second from the right hand side, and the first one on the left in the fourth row from the bottom, If I go that route, I would either leave them out or remake them. So if anyone has any suggestions or ideas, I would appreciate it if you would leave them in the comments.
