Whoa, it's Monday again already....

Where DID last week go??? Time just seems to fly during the holiday's doesn't it? Pretty sure most of you are in the same boat. I didn't get a lot of sewing done this week with going to dinner with friends, going to dinner at the neighbors, having neighbors over for dinner, finishing up the Christmas shopping and getting it shipped off. (Yeah, all caught up there!!!) Baking, eating, cooking, eating, eating.....:-)  It really was a great week!

And look what landed in our tree...sort of...Look closely....It was too cold for "Mr. B" to golf this week  and almost too cold to go fishing since they really weren't biting that well anyway, so he he hid out in the "Shop/Man Cave/Dog House" and carved out ole
"Mr. Eagle" here and put him in the tree in our front yard. "Mr. B" isn't really pleased with this one because he doesn't think it looks real enough. He wanted people driving by to stop and do a double take before realizing it was another carving. As if they would think anything else around here. People are always stopping to take pictures of the bears and fish out in the front yard. Makes for an 'interesting' life style though.



By Friday evening all I had accomplished for the Orca Bay Mystery Step 4 was getting the paper squares cut out. Not a good start. This time I chose to use plain white printer paper. For the previous strings, I used pages from an old phone book, but the ink rubbed off onto my machine bed. I wasn't expecting that to happen with the phone book pages. 

When reading the Step 4 instructions, I was delighted when Bonnie told us to use "a wide variety" in the color we picked for this step. Admitting that I am not usually a 'scrappy' quilter, this is really stepping out of the box for me. (But, that's GOOD quilt therapy.That's what I keep telling myself anyway. :-)) My color scheme for this quilt substitutes Pink for the red. To be exact, I had decided on Magenta, and only had a limited amount. I thought it would be necessary to do a fabric run in order to complete this step. Not so! After seeing what Bonnie had used for her red block and digging deep back into my stash, I ended up with a huge pile of pinks that would work.

Here is what I ended up pulling. The first finished block is barely showing in the upper left corner.

I am really pleased with the way these colors 'play' together. They look a lot better in real life than they do in this photo, too. I also decided to leave the strips all piled up and started pulling them to use as they were touching in the pile. It works out more randomly that way and I'm not over thinking the layout. Which I ALWAYS tend to do.

So far this morning here is my progress. Only 5 squares finished, but by the end of the day I hope to remedy that! Check back later this week for more blocks.

So I'm off to the machine to work on the Step 4 blocks and hopefully my quilt for our bed. (I did get the two side drops completed, but only one sewn on. Need to make some more of the big 'blue' blocks before the ends get finished. After that, all it will need is the final border then it will be ready to quilt! Maybe I'll have more pics of it later this week, too.)

Ok, I really am signing off now to go SEW!!!!