Yes, the yellow cranes continue to arrive.

In fact, there is now a baker's dozen of yellow cranes. So if a yellow cat shows up, a few cranes can disappear and they won't be missed. Meanwhile, my sewing room has a new accessory...a lizard. I caught it, but Tommy let him go again.

A few more yellow cranes have arrived. I'm expecting at least a dozen eventually. Tommy (my cat) just requested a ride upstairs to check on what I'm doing and to enjoy the upstairs buffet. Then he needed a ride back downstairs so he could get back to watching his soap opera or whatever it is that's taking place on the back deck at night.

Yellow! We have a new color for the month of June for the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. So here's the first yellow crane of the new flock.

And here are two yellow cranes. I do have to clean up my sewing technique. I noticed that month to month the size of my blocks change. I thought I had used the wrong measurements when I compared the first yellow crane to a blue one...but it was only creative seams.

I finished all the blocks for the Ocean Waves quilt that I'm making as part of the HSTeria quilt along. I haven't yet figured out the final placement but I'm pretty sure this will be the final size. Each block is roughly 9 inches square.

Here's a close-up of the main block which is composed of four sets of four HSTs, that is 16 total HSTs.

These mini-quilts are each about the size of typing paper (8.5X11 inches). And did I really just call it typing paper? I am a bit astonished to see how many designs were made in 2011...nothing like a challenge to light a fire.

This is the chameleon quilt that Vicki W. mentioned in yesterday's comment.

And this one seems to be foreshadowing my current artistic direction. : )

When I mentioned I don't do applique, I should have mentioned that I meant I have used fusibles, but I don't tend to do anything to the edges like a machine button hole stitch. I fuse batiks or hand-dyed fabric and take the paper off before I cut the pieces as recommended by Melody at Fibermania.

I did a lot of fusing as part of a challenge hosted by (who else?) VIcki W, where we had a year-long challenge to experiment with a new technique each week.

I probably need to revisit these because they were a nice combination of computer drawing with Adobe Illustrator followed by playing with fabric selection.

Are you at the right blog? Where is the cat or mouse or ? I recently joined a local quilt guild where you actually go out into the real world and interact with real people. And wouldn't you know, the first thing I'm asked to do is make two very traditional machine applique blocks. I haven't quite finished although they are due tomorrow.

I'm making three so that one can be practice. These are fused (no problem) with each piece surrounded by a machine embroidery button hole stitch. And how many times have I done this...how about never. So it took me quite a while to find the stitch on my machine. Then I broke a needle because I forgot to change the throat plate. I struggled with trying to see what I was doing on the leaves until it occurred to me that maybe if I used an open foot I could see what I was doing. In any case, by tomorrow I will be an expert at a technique I will never use again. Kind of like trigonometry.

Meanwhile, with no help from me, a tomato plant is doing an imitation of Jack and the Beanstalk out in the front yard. Most of the other tomato plants are in the vegetable garden and are about half this size. It must be getting its inspiration from the surrounding pine trees.