May Day Fun

Most of the first day of May was spent at work. As soon as I got home, I threw ingredients in the pressure cooker to make posole (spicy Mexican soup) and headed to the sewing room. Following my quilting plan, I started working on my first priority - making the block of the month for Pat Sloan's Out of This World project and six RSC blocks.

May's OOTW block "Astronauts" is done. Pressing the units with an iron rather than finger-pressing helped this come together perfectly, rather than the disjointed intersections I created in last month's block.

Orange is the color Angela chose for May.  The six RSC blocks are prepped and ready to sew --- and one block is done already. It was amazing how quickly I was able to gather enough scraps from my stash.

As soon as these are done, it will be time to sandwich Highland Fling and get that baby quilted. Then I will knock out a few Double Delight and Lake of the Lake blocks, and/or maybe a few En Provence pieces. Or maybe add the final borders to a couple projects waiting for attention. I have a couple "squirrel" projects clamoring for attention, quilts to give for a wedding in October and a baby due in December, both friends from my church. 

Before April ended, the last stitch went into the bind of April Showers. Here is a final picture:

I'm calling this quilt DONE even though I still need to add a label. I like to print unique labels on fabric, making six to eight labels per printed sheet. I have at least four quilts that need labels, possibly more. And these are iron-on labels, so I don't even need to stitch them down.  Or should I?  Do any of you have experience with iron-on fabric labels?

If you are a voracious reader like me, you might be interested in the Flashpoint Series by Rachel Grant. The first book in this series, Tinderbox, is set in Djibouti. I like the author's sense of humor (Camp Citron vs the real Camp Lemonnaire) and the heat (pun intended) between the main characters. The US has only one military base in the African continent and it is located in Djibouti, a tiny country across from the bottom tip of the Sinai peninsula.  I enjoy fiction that expands my knowledge of world history and geography within an entertaining story. This one is exciting and very interesting which bodes well for the rest of the series. Right now it is $0.99 USD on Amazon for Kindle.