Breaking my own rules

Can you spot the mistake here?  This morning I paper pieced Ring 4 and Ring 5. Then I laid them out and realized - Ring 5 is going the wrong direction.  ARGGGG!!!  

I broke my own rule, which was to lay out each new ring behind the finished sections to make sure I have them all in the right order.  With this last ring today, I just followed the colors - thinking I knew what I was doing.  So now I get to pick teeny tiny little stitches out to separate those 9 sections. How aggravating!

May is in the rear view mirror

Well - here is what I have accomplished this month in terms of the goals I set:

• 3 green RSC14 blocks - DONE
• 2 Saturday Sampler blocks - DONE
• 1 patriotic block to go with the 1st one - DONE
• South Dakota mug rug for the raffle - DONE
• finish the scrappy pillow - NO
• UFO - bind a quilt (Wishin' For Spring or red Fat Quarter Stars) - NO

And I did complete a NEW project too:

• South Dakota 10-minute table runner

Spicy Spiral is BOO-tiful

This was fun - and after cutting the wedges last night I realized that I had more time to do some sewing too. Next thing I knew the whole top was finished.  I think I'll put muslin on the back of this.

It is supposed to rain this weekend so maybe I will finish this project, and then work on my paper pieced project again.  If it doesn't rain . . . then I'll play some golf instead.  Or maybe I'll get to do both.

Favorite new sewing notion

Numbered pins have become my new favorite notion, especially when trying to keep strip sets in the right order.  These are just terrific!

The strip sets are for a Spicy Spiral table runner with a Halloween theme.  I made a patriotic version of the Spicy Spiral a couple of years ago and just knew I wanted to make another one. Too much time on Pinterest (in the middle of the night when I had insomnia) - and I've found several color schemes I liked. But my decision was easy and I just had to pull 8 fun Halloween fat quarters.  Can't wait to start cutting the wedges from these strip sets.

Shazam - Ring 3

Ring 3 is laid out with the existing sections and ready to be stitched on, which will be done by hand with 9 thread color changes.  Here is the back . . .

And here is a rough look at how it will look from the front.

It's finally summer!

After a long cold winter, and long chilly spring, we finally got summer this weekend. Just in time for some fun in the sun. On Saturday we spent the day celebrating this little guy's 3rd birthday with a picnic in a huge park and a visit to a butterfly house and aquarium. 

On Sunday we met some friends for lunch and golf at their local course. I had my best score ever and actually broke 100.  It may never happen again, but I can say I did it once. And on Monday my husband and I played golf again.  So . . . not much sewing happened over the holiday weekend. But I did start row 3 on my Shazam project.

Shazam Ring 2

Hand stitching these rings is another challenge for my skills. They are hard to hold onto.  And changing thread colors every couple of inches makes for slow going. But ring #2 is being added. Then 3 more rings to go.