Even More Mosaics

Making more Mosaic Blocks for my table runner project. Using up the scraps from making the other blocks to make the smallest size blocks.

Not a final arrangement but I think I have almost enough to figure out how to assemble this thing now.

 

Shopping Local

 

I haven't been to a quit shop in a while, but I needed some more Best Press and a certain type of elastic. Imagine my surprise when I was handed this lovely gift bag at checkout of Santa Cruz Vac & Sew. They had just celebrated their 7th anniversary, and had gift bags for customers. Which was super nice! Shopping local is so necessary.

The three FQs on the right are called Cotton Shantung, they have that lovely slubby texture and almost have the weight and drape of a silk shantung. I thought the patterns were lovely and they had many color combinations available at Hart's Fabrics. Some smiley face wooden buttons, more needles (always more needles just in case of an apocalypse), very wide elastic and a big bottle of Best Press. 

Adding these onto the fabric tracker, and also updating with my recent finishes, I've found that my

 Net Total Fabric for 2026 so far this year is: -11.5 yards 

Yes, you read that right, I'm in the red, I've used up more fabric than I've brought in. Yay, me! We'll see how this holds up through the year.

Mosaic Runner Blocks

 

At the Bay Area Modern Quilting Sew Day yesterday, I worked on making more mosaic blocks so I can put together this project and make a table runner. I was chatting and visiting and concentrating on my blocks so that I only took this picture at the end of the day as I was packing up. 

I haven't worked on this project since our last Sew Day, so I had to take a look at my notes to see what I was supposed to make. I found that I had to re-press the blocks that I made with some Best Press at home.

That's better. Well, flatter.

Here are the blocks I made (I think), I've kind of lost track, but I'm pretty sure these were it. I pushed myself to make those two that are quite a bit lighter.

Overall, I think it's going together pretty well. This is following the square quilt layout we got in our class notes. So I need to work on a layout for a rectangluar table runner size and shape.

At the end of the day, I sewed together a bunch of the smaller scraps and they'll probably end up in the remaining blocks I have yet to sew together.

May To-Do

May feels like a month where a whole lot needs to get done and finished, etc. So, I'm planning to work on  being focused and productive in the studio. Here's what the design wall looks like on May Day. Patchwork Palooza quit top is still up there, waiting for a backing, as well as the almost finished Snake in The Garden and the finished Kawandii. The in-process Ocean Effect is awaiting finishing steps. I'm adding onto my to-do list this month, as I realized that the two UFO challenges I'm participating in, aren't incorporated fully here along with my other to-do's.

Note: the use of 🥏👽  by a project name indicates that it's on the 2026 UFO Finishes challenge list of six projects that I committed to finishing at the beginning of the year (more on that list later). Note, this is not the same list as the UFO Challenge for BAMQ, that UFO will have this next to it on the list:🌀🌐  

QUILTS

Design & Begin

Design and make a quilt for the BAMQ library display for The Wizard of Oz - No picture yet

Pantone Project - work on an overall design, either in EQ8 or up on the design wall.

Lupine & Laughter Mystery Quilt - keep making units following the clue instructions

BAMQ BOM - make monthly blocks of varying sizes through the year.

Continue Assembly

Patchwork Palooza - Decide on borders, make backing & binding

Keep working on Sour Grass Grace from Jane Sassaman class.

Old Town Mystery Quilt - make a backing & binding, decide on whether to have it quilted

AG Stamp Quilt - continue to make more blocks using the final group of fussy-cut stamp block centers from Tula Pink fabrics.

Continue the piecing of Selvedge Candy (maybe the name) quilt originally designed for the 2025 MQG challenge.

🥏👽 Sew the last 6 columns and sashing together of the 2023  Temperature Quilt together to make the quilt top.

Mini QCR Pumpkins table runner- make more blocks and assemble, quilt, finish.

🌀🌐 Five by Five quilt, assemble into quilt top, quilt, finish.

🌀🌐 David Owen Hastings class piece, make more blocks, assemble into quilt top, quilt, finish🥏👽 

                                      

Quilting

🥏👽 Bohemian Wife -  Sandwich this and start quilting it🌀🌐 

Finish assembling and quilting  Ocean Effect for the BAMQ Challenge Modern Art to Modern Quilt display at the SMCF 

Final Steps 

Ocean Effect could go almost go in here too.

🥏👽 Bending the Calendar - Cut up? Re-arrange? Embellish?🌀🌐 

HANDWORK/BAG/CLOTHING PROJECTS 

Make a Cotton Candy pouch for myself.

Make a Charlie's Aunt wool purse for myself, first felt the wool from Pendleton Mill.

Toned-Down Circle Sampler - now that I have the appropriately sized grey background felt, arrange and appliqué the circles, start embroidering.

Y.E.S. Coat - continue making pieces/blocks. assemble on foundation, cut out lining pieces from the fabric that I dyed

Snake In The Garden - Finish hand stitching -  🌀🌐

Body Pillow-knit cotton pillowcase - 🌀🌐 

Quilted Dog Jacket for Meg - 🌀🌐  

Hey! This Is All Finished!

Kawandii - Finished !🌀🌐 

Finished my addition to the Creative Play for BAMQ before Sew Day and passed it on.

Clover Pillowcase - Finished!🌀🌐 

So...how about that? Lots and lots of actual finishing happened, which feels good for the last couple months that felt like I was so close to finishing things. Hope I can keep up the forward progress in May!

Munificent May

 Welcome to Munificent May, I'm looking forward to the flower-filled lovely month ahead. Munificent has always been a word I enjoy seeing in use, so I'm taking the opportunity to use it here. It means magnanimous or generous, which sounds like a good sort of May to me. The monthly marker is made with Percolator and SnapSeed. It's a combination of two of my pictures from April.

First, I started with this picture of my now finished kawandii, 

and then I edited it in Percolator.

Then in SnapSeed I combined it with this picture of the Moss Lady statue in Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, BC, Canada.

Here's my One Second Every Day video for April

Monthly I-Did List for April

1. I worked on the second BAMQ Creative Play piece that got handed to me
2. I started a new quilt for the BAMQ exhibit at the SMCF, quilting it with the walking foot
3. I continued assembling Ocean Effect for the BAMQ exhibit at SCMF.
4. I started working on the Clover quilt pillowcase and finished it for the BAMQ UFO challenge.
5. I made some more Mosaic blocks at Sew Day 
6. I finished my Kawandii just in time for BAMQ UFO challenge.

Doesn't seem like a whole lot, but there are two finishes in there which feels pretty great, as well as starting a completely new piece. It's been a fractured sort of month because I did some international traveling in the middle of April, when we went up to visit family in Nanaimo, BC, Canada for a week,  Hiking happened on our trip to Canada, along with continuing to regularly go to the gym the rest of the month. I went to BAMQ Sew Day. I was fairly active on social media, posted here on le blogue only 18 times,...over on BlueSky 34 times, on Flashes 5 times, and on Instagram  times. 

April Cornucopia

 

Here is a cornucopia post for April, collecting links to many of the things that I enjoyed reading or seeing online during the past month. The picture above is an overgrown Honey Bush flower stalk resting on the top of the green waste cart. This is the weirdest looking plant that I am currently growing my garden. It's from South Africa, Melianthus Major, and it supposedly smells like peanut butter. I disagree on that one.

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Move the Needle, a free 3-day machine quilting online event is happening May13-15.

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Sue Spargo is doing a free block series, Bits & Pieces, combines embroidery with block making in interesting ways.

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A possibly new way to assemble a Potato Chip block. I have yet to make one yet, so I don't know that this is actually new.

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AQS has a a Quilt Across the USA creativity challenge going with 50 state blocks from Bonnie K. Browning's OOP book: "Vintage Quilt Blocks, State by State." Some of them are quite interesting and they're highlighting how to make them with American Made solids which is cool..

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I hadn't looked at Spoonflower in a while, and I really love this fabric collection: Banksia by gabrielleneildesign.

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I'm getting interested in ruler quilting, so this video from Quilting Curve Studio was really fun to watch.

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I kind of want to get some of these tiles made from urchinite - mineralized purple sea urchin shells, so pretty!

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Apparently we've been spraying Roundup on our national forests in very large amounts.

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I'm enjoying listening to some of the concert recordings that are archived here, all sorts of artists available to listen to. Thank you Internet Archive for hosting.

🍯🌾🌼🌻🍯🌾🌼🌻🍯

Wandering Wednesday -Englishman River Falls

 One of the places we visited in Canada was Englishman River Falls, which is on Vancouver Island. It was a beautiful place to hike, not too hard, and there was a very interesting type of waterfall.

It was a very grey and maybe a rainy day, so we pre-gamed with some Tim Horton's (of course). My cousins tell me that it's terrible now that an American company has taken it over. I thought the coffee was decent and the donut was just so-so.

Everything was quite mossy, and there were a lot of warning signs, which DH was taking quite seriously as you can see illustrated here.

When I first saw the upper falls, I'll admit I was a bit confused. Not a traditional single cascade waterfall, this is more spread out, kind of like Niagara Falls is.

The water from the river comes down from a lot of angles and then it all funnels into this small slot canyon.

We decided to call it a Slot Falls.  Quite a lot of force! Apparently it is a dumb high school graduation dare to jump in there. Yes into the slot opening. Presumably the river is running much lower in June. But it doesn't turn out well for everyone. 

This is the view into the deep pool after the falls.

I was fascinated by the patterns of spinning white froth against the cliff edges.

It really was quite mossy!

Some very lovely Pacific Trillium.

Up above the falls, the river was moving swiftly but it was quite peaceful. There was a very wide swath of pebbly beach, when the rains or snowmelt are really going the whole thing is filled with water.

When you hike down the trail there's a point where you can look back up the canyon at the falls. It's really quite tight in there! The bridge we were on is visible up above.

The deep water was such a beautiful shade of green. I was fascinated by the wood debris, all the tree trunks stuck in various places and the large piles of wood left behind by the spring river flow.

A waterfall selfie was taken, of course.

The lower falls weren't as exciting, but I did love the deep green blue in contrast with all the moss and other rock growing plants.

There was a lot more visible action in the lower falls.

A truly amazing amount of moss!

We were really glad that my cousin recommended traveling up to this park, it was well worth the drive.