Intriguing question & one I've been mulling since early this year, in what's mushroomed into an ongoing major redo of an established bed 15'x30' between the front walk & porch. This is a country setting on a low bluff bordered by rolling mixed hardwood woodlands, where the scale of greens reaching high into the enormous bowl of sky dominate the landscape & the views change with the seasons. I've tried to create intimacy within this dramatic framework - a very different challenge than I've encountered before - by weaving shapes & colors along the land that balance the natural instinct to look up & out, that return the eye to earth so that one sees the whole. In some ways it's like living within an enormous snowglobe... My former style - if it ever really rose to a style in contrast to a mishmosh - was more cottage than not, at least in variety & profusion, scent & form. Picking the old friends I love first & auditioning new acquaintances to see if they play well with their neighbors & become friends in turn (or not) is the start. I must have roses and phlox and lavender and and and. Vitality crucial with bountifulness next - settling in comfortably & happily joining the chorus - must work & play well with others, including birds, butterflies, moths, helpful bugs & me! Each must earn their keep, lift my spirits & contribute their unique personality to the mood. So many of your responses echo in my heart - the carefully planned to appear self-sown approach, the mirror effect, the white is always right day & night, the casual structured by formal, the color palettes that make the heart sing. In this place, the saturated pastels please me most, with true pastels & blends, whites, silvers. The colors are deepest against the pale tan stucco & natural stone variations of the house & dim down as they recede into the landscape punctuated by brighter glimmers. Sort of a birthday cake icing look that fits the quality of light here. Succumbed this year to a Fragrant Cloud, an old friend from the past, in hopes its exclamation point brightness will be toned down somewhat close by the house behind less boisterous neighbors. The overall mood I keep trying to evoke is one of peaceful enchantment, refreshing in the heat & warming in the cool, mysteriously somewhere nonspecific in time, a dreamy quality. "Trying" being the keyword here, sometimes it materializes for a spell... Garden fragrant with thaw today, lingered here longer than I meant. Seldom post, often read in spurts, as this lunchbreak today. Know your thoughtful contributions over the years have found fallow ground in my heart & imagination many times. With not even a handful of gardening friends nearby, much appreciate all of you! Sue

Jeanne~ Isn't it funny (no, not really:( when we plan on getting something accomplished, like your UFOs, some other thing cries out for our attention! Then our plans take a 360 & ... well, you know the rest! I have been very hit & miss here lately. I'll be on 2 days in a row then off for a week. Life keeps getting in the way. My biggest problem these days is that I cannot quilt when I have little ones in my house. I could if they were mine! But when I have other people's children, I feel I need to give them all my attention. (Plus my sewing room is at the opposite end of the house from the family room) Depending on the day, I'll have anywhere from 1 child to 7. Unfortunately, the only 2 who are potty trained are in school part of the day! Seems like I change a lot of diapers or I'm taking someone to the potty! 2 of the boys are being potty trained & doig very well. But they are still at the stage where when they've gotta go, get out of the way! LOL Of course, by the time they've all left & dinner is over, I'm exhausted!! It's not at all unusual for me to fall asleep before finishing dessert! LOL 'Course then I feel obligated to stay up late to make up for the 30 min I lost! Right now I'm putting the binding on 2 graduation quilts & piecing (still) a 3rd. Also have a baby quilt & 'big brother' quilt to make as soon as the others are finished. I had hoped to get to a few UFOs by now but no way is that going to happen! How does that line go?? 'Please stop the music - I'm dancing as fast as I can!' ?? Make it 'quilting as fast as I can' & that's me! ;) And probably a few others this time of year too! How 'bout the rest of you?? What is everyone else doing?? *I hope we hear from Kay soon that all went well w/her surgery! ~Cindy BTW - I'm jealous re:your garden! With all this rain ours isn't even IN yet! ('course neither is anyone elses', but geez!)

Thought I would post this FYI since many of us in the Birthday Block groups have chosen blocks found on Quilterscache.com. And many beginners to quilting might not think to look up the term "scant 1/4-inch." Some of the patterns on Quilterscache call for the use of a "scant 1/4-inch seam" when piecing the blocks. This is the definition of that term: "What's a SCANT 1/4" ?... A scant 1/4" seam is about two threads shy of a true 1/4", and is done to compensate for the amount of block width you lose each time you press over a seam allowance. This is really important! Think of a 12" block that is made up of four 3" squares across...each time you press over the seam, you are losing about 1/16th of an inch...so you just "lost" 1/4" of your block!" [quote from Quilterscache.com] A scant 1/4-inch is not a 1/8-inch seam. So be very careful when piecing that you are not taking too small a seam in your block construction or those seams won't meet precisely and those points may get cut off. I use the piecing foot made for my machine and move my needle position over to the right. This gives me the closest to a true 1/4-inch that I feel is possible on my machine. I piece all my blocks with this preparation before I begin and I have good success matching seams and resulting in a block I can be proud of. Teresa

(I had posted this last week, but for some reason, it didn't stay posted, so apologies for that. I really did give you an answer...) :-) June - you asked about when to get started with the reading. We have set this kind of thing up with the starting date of the discussion (mid-June) to allow people who know their own reading styles and speeds to start whenever they want. It's an ongoing discussion so you don't even have to have it read by the mid-June deadline - that means, however, that you run the risk of spoilers coming to the fore since there is a general assumption that most people in the discussion will have read and finished the book. So - I think you can start whenever you choose. I did start my book last week, but then looked at the date and realized that there was v little chance I would recall much of the book since I was starting so early. So - to give you an idea - I will probably start reading mine about the beginning of June... Does that help?