I woke this morning.....

and there was this strange sound on my roof....pit, pat, splat!  Now what was that? I am sure I have heard it before some place........ah, yes, RAIN!  I feel like I want to strip off and run around in the rain.  It's ok, I promise no photos :-)

Now life can get back to normal.  I have been working on a few applique projects, and I got the next part ready for the Tiptoe Through the Tulips quilt.

We are now up to the first border.  You get to make these 4 pieced border strips, by either hand or machine, then add the appliqued stars in the corners.  Once again, I stuck pretty close to the original quilt colourings, and found this reproduction brown printed plaid, with a pink leaf pattern on top.  The original quilt maker used a couple of different brown prints.

The pattern is now available to download on the Legend and Lace website.  The cost is $4.50 for each part.

I started to download the Benjamin Biggs block of the month, and went looking for a stash of Smithsonian fabrics I had hidden away, thinking I could use some.  I found the fabrics, but I also found for Maltaville Album blocks from 2012.  Many completed, and quite a few partly complete.  I saved the BB blocks to my computer, and went back to the Maltaville blocks.  They are very interesting blocks, and I get to play with lots of different fabrics as well.

These are some of the finished blocks I found, and I would guess there are another 4-6 blocks elsewhere. 

There are also these 5 partly completed blocks.  I used some of these as demos for "back-basting" applique as they have some really good shapes to show the technique.  Not only can you use it to make the larger shapes like the leaves, but I use the same method to do the skinny little stems.  So many interesting shapes in this quilt.

Perhaps this will be my priority for a while.  I must make a list!