Needles and Pens

Officially en route to the birthday boy today, and therefore really and truly finished... ( Thanks to Austin's grandma and grandpa, for the extra-special delivery service! ) ... for my great-nephew, Austin, who turned thirteen last week. Since he was born before I really started quilting, he's waited a very long time for his quilt. On the plus side, his is a lot bigger than the baby quilts his younger cousins have received! The inspiration for this quilt came over a year ago, when I joined an online quilting bee to make blocks for Margaret's Hope Chest . One of the requested blocks was a very simple, sports themed hourglass block. If you look closely at the finished quilt for Joshua , you'll see a couple of familiar blocks in there... ... 9-1/2" squares of the sports print and black Kona cotton, cut diagonally both ways, sewn back together and trimmed down to 8-1/2" blocks. Here are all of the blocks sewn together for Austin's quilt, before ...

Honestly, I'm about to cry "Uncle" on this challenge (who's brilliant idea was this anyway?), but maybe August will be that magical month when all the loose ends are tied up and I feel like I can actually move forward. I'm giving it one more shot anyway... First, some "progress" on the kitchen (the MAY project): The replacement window we ordered came in -- but we measured wrong. It's a little too small, so now some carpentry is required to make it fit. How we'll trim it all out and make it look right is beyond me, but there has to be a way. Of course, before we discovered that it was too small, we had the old window completely out. And then right back in it went: Last night we got the supplies to "make it fit," so maybe it'll be finished in the near future... (sigh) Meanwhile, I picked a number for August (which I'm already beginning to regret)... number nine, the basement storage room: Looks like fun, ri...