I’m caught up – again! At least for now. This is another applique block if that isn’t obvious.  When I first saw this block, I just took in what it looked like – a squirrel – and couldn’t imagine how on earth she came up with this as a design.

Then I saw the title – sewing nut.  Aha!  Very cute play on words!  I am just going to admit it – I was pretty excited to have what I thought was the perfect fabric for the tree. Our neighbors behind us have a tree that has lots of knots in it, and this reminds me of the tree I see behind our house every day.  On the other hand, that tree has some dead branches and the owner isn’t good about trimming their trees regularly so if it ever falls on our property I may not be as happy about this block – haha!

I finished this one other than the satin stitch around the edges over lunch and the button.  Both of those were because I realized I had no brown thread.  How does a person sew regularly and not have brown thread?  I guess I ran out at some point and didn’t replace it.  The tree was actually supposed to be laid between the light background and the dark ground but I thought placing it on top made it more 3 dimensional.

The fabric on the face confused me at first but I think that’s supposed to represent chubby cheeks that have acorns in it.  The designer suggested using a button from our stash.  Am I the only person doing this who doesn’t have a big bowl of really interesting buttons?

A trip to JoAnn’s was in order after work.  I could buy one button that had a flower like the original pattern called for $3.99, or I could be 3 of another one that wasn’t as interesting but was $3.49.  I haven’t used any flower shaped buttons in the past few years so it made more sense to me to just buy this one.

As usual, I’m holding off trimming these for now.  I am going to end up running out of room to have anything else on my design wall (aka flannel sheet pinned to a wall!) if I keep leaving all of these up here. I wonder how everyone else is dealing with this?

In other news, I realized I need to make my name badge for quilt guild in the next 3 weeks.  I looked at the 3/4 block I had made previously and the truth is…I wasn’t feeling it.  Maybe it was too busy and not crisp.  I decided to chuck it.  I picked up a practice block I had made for something else months earlier and quilted it for the front.  And I wasn’t feeling it.

Let’s start from scratch.  I decided to start by picking the fabric first and then I remembered I had this fabric left over from Lori Holt’s Bee In My Bonnet and the green really struck me.  I went through a book that came with one of my AccuQuilt Go cubes and found a block that I liked.  This one caught my eye and I’m going with it.  I sewed a strip at the top and I’ll write my name on it.  My plan is to quilt this, make a back the same size and quilt it, add a strap to go around my neck and call it a day.  I originally thought I was going to put a zipper at the top but now I’m thinking….nah…