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Tuesday, July 1, 2014

TOM 6 Salem Star for Charlotte Forten Grimke

Sorry, I'm a little out of order here and you might be wondering about the June Poppies block. It will show up soon though.

 On Saturday I was out at my guild Saturday Sewing event and Pinkdeenster and I were trying to select and cut fabrics for our blocks. That fabric on the outer edge I have had for a while but had not yet found a good spot for it. When I measured the width of those pointy bits it was just the width I needed but then Pink suggested adding in a little of the diagonal line because it would act as an outer darker frame. So that's what I did. Wasn't it a great suggestion? Thanks Pink!

At this point in the project I am watching all the other pretty blocks getting put up on flickr and sighing and wondering if I made the right decision with my own which cannot be called pretty. But, it is what it is. In each block my rule is that I have to use that chartreuse green, I have to use the solid grey as a background and I have to have a bird fabric in there someplace. For the other fabrics I can use what I want so long as it has not already been used.

H'mm, now I am at the halfway point I am thinking it might be an idea to use those fabrics one more time each, maybe in a different combination that the first time around. So we'll see what the block looks like next month and see how that plan works up.

There was a lot of story associated with this block but my usual creativity in matching a fun photo with the block did not bring up anything good at all. The birds therefore provided my subject.
 We like to feed the birds and they do enjoy stopping off at the feeders. Usually there is just the one feeder up and we stock it with sunflower seed which keeps the little birds, who can get through the outer protective cage, quite happy as the squirrels cannot access the seed.  However last time we were at the bird feeder store I suggested we again try the safflower seed as it had been quite a while since we last put it out in a feeder.
Within a day I remembered why we stopped using safflower. The chipmunks love it and can empty the feeder in a day. Here I caught the critter in the act. That animal was so delighted with the new food source it did not want to run away and I got really close with the camera before it took off.

The runaway slaves that we hear about in the monthly stories were never this brazen in their actions!