T-shirt quilt progress, some yardwork, the sampler and SNOW!

After work I threw a chicken in a big pot to cook for soup, I got busy. My accomplishments for yesterday included getting the left hand row and the center row almost sewn together on the t-shirt quilt. After I hung the center row back up on the design wall I realized it was a bit short. I will add that striped piece of fabric to the pink shirt then sew the left and center row together. Ann, this quilt doesn't seem as structured, but there is a lot of fussy work with making sure the designs line up north to south and that everything stays nice and flat. I put a new blade in my rotary cutter so when I layer the pieces to cut and add an improv insert piece, slicing thru both layers at a time is easy. Robbie, I like your analogy of it is like being pregnant! The quilt seems to take a life of it's own and can throw a curve ball at me anytime! I try to look ahead, but things pop up that I didn't anticipate.

Even though it was in the 40's when I got home from work, I wanted to get started on cleaning up the Lenten Rose bed. I hadn't done anything with this bed ever since I started it years ago except for digging out a few plants to move to the new shade garden and to give a large plant to my brother to put in the yard of a house he was remodeling. Here is the before and current.

Doesn't look a whole lot different, but I only got the area on the left third done. I trimmed off the old leaves and pulled out lots of leaves. I had quite a large pile of debris!

I found some starts which I dug up and transplanted in the shade bed. They will have a chance to thrive here easier. After I get the rest of the bed cleaned up I plan on moving the plants around to fill in that corner on the left.

I made some nice progress on the sampler border. Here is where I was Monday and where I am now.  It is a simply, but pretty border.

Donnie, you are a no reply blogger so I will answer your question here. The difference, to me, between cashel linen and Irish linen is that the cashel threads are thicker and more consistent in size. The thread in the Irish linen vary in thickness and the weave is more open. Here is a picture of both. The Irish linen is the first picture. I laid it over a darker fabric so you can see how the weave is more open. Thanks for your question!

This morning I woke up to snow! Not just a little bit, but 3 - 4" had fallen! It had quit snowing at my house, but it is still coming down 15 miles away at work. It is quite pretty, but the trees are struggling not to break under the weight. Their budding leaves catches more snow.  It is not going to get that warm today so I would guess that it will not be disappearing until tomorrow afternoon once it starts to warm up.