A Baby Boy Quilt for Soren

I finished up a baby quilt for a cousin's baby boy, who is due to arrive in July.

I used my 'go to' baby quilt pattern from one of  the Eleanor Burns books.  It's an easy quilt and makes a nice size for a play blanket for inside or outside.  The green squares were totally from scrap pieces, but I had to buy the blue fabric and backing fabric.  Now that I'm not working at a paying job, I am beginning to pay more attention to how much fabric costs these days!!  whew!

This is not a very good picture of the backing fabric, but the backing makes me happier than the pieced top.  You can see it better in the next photo.

Aren't those critters so cute???

This is a sneak preview of my new porch being built on the back of my house.  It's not very large, but so much safer than what we had, which was just a set of steep brick steps.  I hope the porch will be finished later this week and I will try to remember to share completed pic's.  (that's 11 year old Sweet Pea in the background)

If you click to enlarge, you can see little orange embroidery stitches made to try to brighten up the top of the quilt.  There is quite a pop of orange in the background fabric, so I added a few orange stitches on front.  Hopefully, baby Soren will get to use this quilt for a long time.

So, I saw this beautiful quilt by Jen Kingwell in a quilting book and immediately thought this would make a great hand piecing project for me.  You are seeing all seven of the blocks that I made and decided to stop.  They are all very wonky and were difficult to get consistently sized.  In all fairness,  I traced and made my own templates, which may have added to the confusion, but I've decided to look for another less challenging piecing project.  I really enjoy hand piecing while watching tv or listening to the radio.

Here's a picture my girls sent to me from Easter.  Annabelle turned 3 last month and I'm amazed at how well she is talking and just growing up overall.  My other grandbabies took a big trip to Florida and took in several amusement parks during their Easter vacation.  I think they had a wonderful time!

And..... she now has 12 chickens.  Our little girl is a chicken lover.  She is just like her mommy, loves animals of all kinds.

That's about it:

I have read a couple of really good books.

 GIRL IN THE SONG by Chrissy Cymbala Toledo    (this could almost be my life story)

I am currently reading a funny older one (2006) by Fanny Flagg:  CAN'T WAIT TO GET TO HEAVEN 

She has such a way of describing us Southerners and this book is a hoot.  I should finish it up by tomorrow, I hope.

I'm trying to pick up real 'paper and print' books from my own stash to read, instead of using my kindle so much.    I have so many that I haven't read , so my goal is to read through them, so I can pass them along and clear out room for more!