This layer cake was a challenge to work with – half of it consisted of two light prints and I wasn’t sure I could come up with something I would like but the blocks are made and I think it’s going to make a cute donation quilt – and for $12.40 which is what I paid for the layer cake at Craftsy, it’s a bargain. The photo is dark because I finished the blocks up tonight after Keith went to bed.

I will say Layer Cakes are not my favorite precut to work with … I definitely prefer fat quarters and Jelly Rolls. I feel like I have so many more options for designing and using them.

It will be a pain to fix it but at least it’s near the edge of the quilt! It’s one reason I take photos but I should have looked a little closer at the snapshot of the finished blocks and I might have noticed the mis-rotated block!

Keith had a lot of catching up to do after our vacation so he spent most of the day working which was fine with me, I crocheted this morning and then this afternoon I worked on some strips and strings log cabin blocks. One of my goals for the month is to get this to the finished top stage.

My string bin is looking a bit lame … I haven’t fed it in a long while. I guess I’ll have to sort through the scrap bins and pull out the leftover strips and strings to add to it. Most of the lights are in the plastic bag, it helps to have them separated when I’m working on these blocks.

We took a break from work to attend a neighborhood picnic and then took a quick swim – it was 90 degrees at 5pm so it felt good to cool off when we got back home. We’re lucky that we live right near the small park where the picnic was held so it was easy to walk over and back.

Narrow strips and Strings are our “precut” for May which is perfect because I’ve been meaning to make one of my Strips and Strings Log Cabin quilts for a few years now …. time goes by quickly and I think the last one of these I finished was in 2014 not too long after we moved from Minneapolis.

I need 48 blocks and the first 8 are done. Hopefully they’ll go quicker now that I’m back in the groove.

For now I’m taking a break to snuggle with Finn. We got a trip coming up and I want to make sure he gets lots of attention before I leave.

I also finished all the blocks for the dinosaur quilt today. In the end I went with no borders and a 6 x 9 block layout that will finish at 48 x 72. I could have stopped at 8 rows but I had just enough fabric for 9 and I’m putting a Minkee backing on this one and want it to get used for years!

I needed to make 18 extra blocks and had just enough fabric from the one yard to be a little fussy about cutting the 9 dinosaur blocks.

From the first batch, I ended up with a couple blocks that just had tails but they look kind of neat so I’m OK with that!

I can see a few that I want to move around from the photo but here are all the blocks together. I’d like to get this assembled into a finished top before I travel again for Mother’s Day.

I bought this fabric bundle at the quilt show in February … it had a free 5 Yard Quilt pattern that came along with it and I’m a little surprised at how cute it’s turning out. I did a google search thinking I could find the link to the pattern to share with you and found it on Pinterest. This is a variation of printed pattern I have but the two blocks are the same even though the borders and layout are different – I’m changing the layout from the pattern anyway since I don’t like square quilts … and may or may not use borders.

Click here to see pattern.

This is working up pretty quickly and is really a cute idea for featuring a focus fabric. I think the hardest part would be choosing the 5 fabrics! I have more of the map fabric from Connecting Threads … maybe even enough to make another one of these.