Follow Your Own Path QAL - Third Set of Four Blocks

I am hearing that the blocks are easy to make, yay me, and I'm seeing some beautiful colour combinations, yay you, and I'm excited to see these quilts grow, yay us! If you missed linking up your progress in last week's linky, not to worry, there is the hashtag on Instagram, #followyourownpathqal. Thank you so much to those of you who have been sharing your progress; it gives me such a thrill.

Here we are at the half way point of block making, and the start of May! Get ready to grab your fabrics in the third colour family for this week's four blocks.

My Dad's Tees

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.... Just a quick note that I am back to .com.  Sorry for all the mess this may have created. I found that many of my old posts, such as tutorials, yoga Sunday Stretches, and some of the Gallery would either give me a 'site is not secure' or 'Safari can't find the site' or it would just bounce you to the home page, most frustrating. All hopefully will be fine with you; one thing you can do is clear your history and cookies or just restart your computer too, and it should find mmmquilts.com as it did up until the past two weeks!

I got a stack of t-shirts at the end of last summer to make a t-shirt quilt for my grandson Brady. His Grandma Hague had given a bunch of t-shirts to Brianne that had belonged to Tim, Brady's dad. They went through them and chose the ones to include in a quilt. Some he elected to keep for himself to wear, awww.

DrEAMi! #51

I know it's May 1, and DrEAMi is usually the last Saturday of the month, but I didn't realize this until part way through this past week, that the last Saturday was actually April 24! Yikes. I very nearly forgot about it this morning, but here we are! Don't worry, there will be the regular DrEAMi, on May 29.

But chase a new quilt project? You're on!

Gratitude #51

I know we say it each month, but it seems only two weeks ago that it was the beginning of April, the start of my annual QAL, and my birthday, and here we are with one day left in the month! April is one of my favourite months of the year. Although the up and down weather can be frustrating, in general, it is such a month of hope and promise.

Top row: First week of April beginning with April Fool's on the 1st - no fools, snow! March had been beautiful and all kinds of spring flowers (many posted on Instagram) were thriving, like the squill and daffodils and the white magnolias, with the pale pink ones beginning to open. I was even in the pool on April 7, enjoying the summer-like temperatures.

Bottom row: April 18, my azalea was glorious, as was our pale pink magnolia, at its peak, when, on the 21!!! we got even more snow. We've lived here a total of 14 years, and other than a few whirling flakes through the air that melted as soon as they hit the ground, we've not seen snow like this. I was able to cover and protect the azalea but not the magnolia. It melted within the day, so it was good for the grass and roots of plants! Not so good for Sandra's spirits however.

Follow Your Own Path - Second Set of Four Blocks

I've been seeing some beautiful fabric pulls for this quilt along, and I cannot wait to see more, as well as the first blocks being born. A linkup for showing your progress is at the end of this post. This week we will make four arrow blocks that point to the left.

As John Ross says, always think about where the light is coming from. In my mind the shadows are beneath the arrows.

Cushions for H2H

When I read guest blogger Carole's post on Sarah's blog, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, I immediately thought that's what I'll do for my neighbour to go with her quilt, make her a pretty cushion. I had made her a family couch time quilt which you can read about here. She works at one of our two grocery stores in town; we share part of our back fence. A single mum, she has two young boys, who are often babysat by her mum, who has a dog, Shadow. It was through Shadow and our dog, Rocco, that we first met.

Here is her very own cushion, which is meant as just for S.

TGIFF - Friendly Fences, an H2H Quilt

Welcome to TGIFF! This is a linkup to show our finished quilt projects. And oh yes, pass on some inspiration.

I have finished the quilt for my neighbour who is an essential worker at one of our local grocery stores. You can read the story behind the quilt in this post. That will help you see why I named the quilt Friendly Fences, which may seem to be an oxymoron. It isn't, because our dogs becoming good friends through the chainlink fence between our yards led to us getting to know each other more.

I was really pleased to read that Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict added this category to the Hands2Help comfort quilt drive. Unless you know someone who works in a grocery store or a pharmacy, I don't think we tend to think of them as people like ourselves, with families and homes and lives, you know what I mean? And I don't know about your governments, media, and rich fat cats who own these grocery and pharmacy chains, but mine here in Canada started out regularly highlighting their contributions. One even gave them an hourly raise at first...and then took it back. Now we don't hear so much about their continued efforts, though CBC TV runs a very poignant ad about nurses.