Crabapple, irises & my Dear Jane start

I figured out what I did wrong in making the units for the checkerboard border on the Crabapple quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter (http://www.quiltville.com).

I was thinking the bigger units that start with a LDL was UnitA and the dark finished 9-patch was a unitB....wrong...the sub units that make up these two larger units were the ones I needed to make. So I made like 5 times more than what I needed.

But hey! Now I have a checkerboard border ready for another scrappy quilt which will likely be Bonnie's Scrappily Irish in her new book "Adventures with Leaders & Enders".
She used 2" squares. I will use 1 1/2" squares.


Our irises are blooming and these smell sooooooooo good. I want to pick them to bring in but decided to allow them to live outside and I can visit them from time to time.

Spring and all it's glory hides an evil face at times....hate these maple seeds. Hubby calls them helicopters. I tired to sweep them yesterday but the wind was blowing more down as I was sweeping. I gave up.

I have 6 Dear Jane blocks done. I am so very proud of myself. Last week I was ready to burn the program or cut my head off. Nothing was going right with these blocks.

But yesterday I was very calm and was able to make 6 blocks in a short afternoon of sewing.
Now I feel a sense of excitement and pleasure. I was going to make them in gray/pink combinations but this Eco muslin and a fabric sampler w/ a cardboard header seem to play so nice together that I will use the pink/gray in something else.