Progress

I'm still at home with sciatica. The worst problem is lack of sleep. I'm lucky to get a couple of hours a night, so not in any shape to be working. I'm sometimes able to grab a nap during the day, but certainly not quality sleep. Some days I'm not motivated to do anything but sit and peruse Instagram. Not showering regularly, so not even going out the door. I feel like I've already missed a good part of the summer, thanks to this sciatica. The latest analgesic is really not any more effective than all the others I've tried. However, I'm now able to do my exercises a little more regularly, so that's progress. The frustrating thing is there are days when I feel like I'm genuinely getting better and then I'll have a day when the pain has gotten worse again. Or a night when I can't sleep at all because I just can't get comfortable. But in between naps and being an Instagram zombie, I have been able to get some work done on some quilts and an afghan. 

Here's Janet's Flower Garden:

I've got 6 more rounds to go to get it finished. Here's a close-up of the last few rounds:

I started working on Damian's Dinosaur Days quilt.

The quilt top is getting close to being finished. Then, while perusing this book,  I got distracted by another project. Seeing the Frame Sashing, I decided to see if this would work with my leftover John Deere fabric to make a quilt for my niece Tara's youngest son, Jake. In the book, the sashing is used to frame a 12" square piece of the feature fabric, resulting in an 18" block with the sashing. I wanted to make 9 blocks, but only had enough fabric for 6. Then I realized I still had a pillow panel,

which I could use for one block. I had to add a border to make it a full 18". 

I still needed a couple more blocks, and didn't want to purchase more fabric, if I could avoid it. So I decided to make a couple of regular quilt blocks with some of the smaller pieces of fabric, and started looking through my library of quilting books to find an appropriate one. In this book,  I found a block called Farm Friendliness. The book provides templates, but this block is so simple and straightforward, that I didn't require them. So, after making sure I had enough fabric for all of the sashing, I made 2 Farm Friendliness blocks.

When I cut out the sashing, I had to make sure to cut half of the parallelograms in the reverse orientation. The book uses solid fabrics, which basically don't have a right or wrong side, so didn't include instructions to reverse half of them. I'm really glad I remembered to do it. Then I had to work on the layout.

Mystery approved.

It's a little more scrappy looking than I normally like my quilts, but I still like it. I think that sashing really looks great with the Farm Friendliness blocks, and if I had more of the fabric I used in them, I might consider making the whole quilt in this block. But the farm equipment in the blue fabric is fairly large and wouldn't work well for smaller pieces. I think I might rearrange the blocks so that the Farm Friendliness blocks are in a straight column with the panel, rather than a diagonal line. I'm hoping to have enough of the solid green to make a 3" border and that will make it a 60" quilt - not bad for using leftover fabrics. Not sure what I'll use for binding, and I'll have to purchase something for the backing. 
I've decided that, in addition to my goal to make at least one quilt with each quilting ruler that I own, I would also like to make at least one project from every book that I own. That will result in a lot of projects, but with this one, I've knocked two books off the list. 
If you're interested, here's the post about the first John Deere quilt, whence came the leftovers for this quilt.