Let's end this month with a pink floral kaleidoscope while I finally finish quilting the QOV quilt.

Guess what we, I mean Tommy, did today? In addition, Tommy has been very busy getting into things that he's not supposed to now that his mobility has improved. Pay back. He is also going up to various cupboards and asking me to open them so he can look inside. It may be a while before he gives me instructions to resume quilting.

How can we all work together to end feline abuse? Yes, it's me Tommy your guest blogger. As you may know, I am a three-legged cat with arthritis in my front leg. So why is it the victim who must be stuck with needles. rubbed with heat prods and fed so many treats I get a stomach ache?  And why can't we just use these "treatments" to get better staff response times? I can only fantasize my revenge...

The purple turtle was hoping to have some other purple friends join him in the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. But alas. If there are other purple turtles, they must be under all the debris caused by the kittens and mice in the sewing room.

I've modified the pattern since last month. These were the earlier versions of the pattern. Except for gap between head and tail, I'm starting to like the first version the best. I may have to scare the turtles back into their shell before I take their picture.

About a gazillion and four years ago, I started an ocean waves quilt from batiks. There was a "new" method of making half square triangles that involved sewing strips of bias fabrics into yardage. The half square triangles (with bias edges) are cut from this. I don't remember much else. I have lots of these strips sewn together and lots of HSTs, so this will be my first plan of attack for Vicki's HST quilt along.

The trees have turned a lovely saturated spring green as they grow their new leaves.

And the apple tree continues to blossom (its first time), apparently in response to my threats to remove it.

I have been working through iterations of this turtle. Although I like the head coming out of the shell, in the last version the head seemed way to large for the shell. And this time I remembered the tail. But I think it still needs something...like eyes and a mouth.

The kittens and mice were making such a ruckus I had to spend most of the day outside.

And here is Tommy showing his brilliant design sense:  triangles on his ears. He is obviously a fan of modern neutrals.

It was only a matter of time. Thanks to the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge, my sewing room is full of colorful birds and mice. It has happened before, so I wasn't too surprised when one of Mystic Quilter's purple cats showed up. WARNING: The carnage that follows is not suited for all viewers.

Oh no! It's worse than I thought. Kittens!

This is the color of neglect.

And this is what I am working on. Theoretically.

Today is usually the first day that hummingbirds arrive to this area. However, we are having lots of wind and rain and are expecting freezing temperatures overnight. So instead of hummingbirds, these six cranes flew into the sewing room. They are all right wing cranes and are already fighting with the left wing cranes.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a torrential downpour. I figured that I would be reseeding pea pods and lettuce later in the week (after the two nights of freezing temperatures). But oddly, the seedlings were fine. Even the bleeding heart came through unfazed. Once the wind and rain die down a bit, I'll go out and get everything covered.

I revamped the origami crane pattern during the second month of the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge and this month I decided to have cranes facing both directions. This has meant that I needed to go back and rework and add cranes. This is what I have so far.

Here's Tommy happily participating in the fractured quilt sleep-a-long.

Here are some purple origami cranes for the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. And today, the focus was on challenge. The first crane had a genetic mutation that made its body to big for its head. Nature is cruel. Then reversing the cranes was harder than it needed to be. And I think the cranes are going to settle down in the sewing room as long as none of those scary purple cats show up.

Spring floral kaleidoscope.

I am working in the yard a lot right now with nothing much to show for it. The lettuce and pea pods are just starting to poke through the soil. So let's take our inspiration from a picture of the pea pods in the garden a year ago.

There is something about the rainbow scrappy challenge that is allowing me to play and experiment block by block without worrying about how everything will come together. One of my rainbow experiments is an improvisational alphabet. I randomly assigned letters and punctuation to each month of the year and now I am making the letters in the color for that month. And yes, I would like to fix the kink in the question mark, but I'm learning to think its charming.

I saw something that looks a bit like this out in the garden the other day. However, the garden is quite empty right now. Tommy suggested I invite him into the sewing room.

But I think Tommy is hoping for a bunny hop...

that would certainly turn into a bunny bash.

April is the purple month over at the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. And here's a purple mouse all grown up. This was the easiest one to make because all I had to do was wait for it to grow up.

Here's the mouse as a baby with its litter mates.

And as we know, not all the babies make it to adulthood.

I have finally turned all of those composting strips into scrappy trip blocks that can now join the gazillion or so blocks I had already made. (Let's not forget I started this two years ago as part of Fibermania's quilt along February featuring the scrappy trip around the world design.) This layout isn't final. I'm just introducing the new blocks to the old blocks to see if they will play well with each other.

This is a frame from a video I took of Tommy. He is trying to teach the sewing robot to stop sewing and feed him treats. But instead the sewing robot is pointing a camera at him. He is wondering how he could possibly make his instructions more obvious.