A New Quilt, Passacaglia Progress and Some Birds

 

Ready to start a new quilt which I intended just to be an excuse to get rid of some of my brown strips, of which I have two big bags.  I was going to donate it but as I got going on it, I realized it is the colors of my lion quilt which is in my living room  on the wall and it will make a great snuggling quilt up there.  I used my 2 1/2 in strips and also put a 2 1/2 inch square in the middle.  The strips are 5 1/2 inches long.  Next time I would make the centers larger and I wish I had made them greener,  This is how I sort my strips (although the next batch will have the beige strip already sewed on).  I put them  in piles and then randomly take pieces.  I do this with most of my scrappy pieces so they are not totally randomly selected out of bags as some people do.  I like a little more control with my scraps!

Each block takes about ten minutes to make so they are going pretty fast!

Still working along on the Passacaglia block and have the starts to two more and I am further on this one, actually doing the last row.  I am sure I am not going to make the whole thing at this point but will do some subset and consider it done.  The pieces are just too small and my eyes don't need all that strain!  I do like having some hand sewing to do.  

It was an afternoon of birds this week at my daughter's house on a beautiful sunny day teasing of spring to come  This was an Eastern Phoebe, a frequent visitor.

This is a female Bluebird.

And here is her presumptive mate!  They are also frequent visitors.

This is a Yellow-rumped Warbler, also called a "butter butt" down here.

A Great Blue Heron was frequenting the pond.

Way off by the pond was this Northern Flicker high up in a tree.  I am not used to seeing them in trees although they are woodpeckers.  He has a red tuft on the back of his head but the light was bad for photographing him.

There were of course the ever-present Turkey Vultures circling overhead.

There were also hawks off in the distance but I wasn't quick enough to get their pictures.