A Valentine's Ice Sculpture & More

Sophie and I took Saturday & went to my mom's house. I needed a break from parenting the boys (middle kid is challenging my desire to be a mother these days). Upon my return, was this lizzard-like thing, sculpted from ice in the front yard (what you cannot see is the 3' high snow bunker off to the left of the lizzard!)! There was undoubtedly a little fabric shopping that day, but it's not all that scintillating!
Finishes for the last few days...
I have quilted and bound the "Love" quilt. It turned out well. It has just a simple large meander quilting pattern. This becomes number eight for my 2009 Project Linus donations. Not too bad...averaging right at one a week. At this pace (which will most certainly fall off soon), I'll nearly double last year's donation count.

I did another top solely from my strip box. The strips are all widths so this is not a traditional bento box pattern, but my adaptation. It is 48 6-1/2" blocks, and a three inch border. The border is bright pink check. It kind of reminds me of Peppermint Patty. Maybe that is what I will name this. Sadly, this barely made a dent in my strip box, and more than made a disaster of my sewing space. There are small scraps everywhere that need cleaning up.

Last week I also made this. It is a thank you gift for my son's speach therapist. Next week he will have his last session with her. He's seen her for 19 months now, and with his sister starting speech also, it is great to see him finish. She has a huge lilac bush in her yard, and Bryce used to comment about the scented lilacs well after they were blooming (when there was snow on the ground in fact!). She also likes purple about as much as I do. Her house is tiny, and since Bryce couldn't tell me well enough what size table she has (I'd planned a runner or center-piece), I opted for a small hanging. It's 19". The nine squares came from a piece of material I had - I just cut them out of it. They are odd shaped, not really square or rectangular, so I hope they don't look too wonky.

I did a little detail quilting on each square, some are outlined, others just have the leaves quilted. I think that JulieAnn will be pleased. It definitely looks like something to usher in spring (once the foot or more of snow we have melts!!)