Progress on Pint Size by Kim Diehl from the book Simple Whatnots III.  

The quilt ruler and rotary cutter combo that I'd been using since the days of the dinosaurs finally gave up the ghost on Thursday last week....right in the middle of cutting strips for Pint Size. BEB was quite disgusted at the timing, as I'd made finishing this quilt top my project of the day.  

It's a handy tool that had a lot of use over the years.  The new one I ordered is from Fiskars.  I've not used it yet, as I only took it out of the box when I got home from work yesterday morning.  There will be pics and what I think about it on the next post.

I didn't fancy any other sewing machine project, so pulled out the oldest WIP.  There's less than 20 sides to stitch down on this project.  It got bogged down on the last round when I used thicker than normal junk mail to cut out the hexies.  This project is glue basted (I swing between glue and thread basting depending on what I feel like doing at the time) and it was only after finishing basting ALL the hexies (with not spare fabric) that I realized the card was too thick to fold in half properly.  So, progress has been slow, as I get sick of working on it after battling with a few hexies.

Aurifil Makeo 80wt is my new favorite thead for hand stitching English Paper Piecing.  It's very fine and just sinks in between the hexies.  It breaks fairly easily with being a fine thread, but that's an easy fix.....be gentle!

I feel like I'm beginning to get the hang of very basic crochet skills.  This book has been an enormous help in keeping me motivated.  For a few months, I've been cranking out crochet body parts for different animals from this book.  

This is the pic from the book of the first animal.  The difficulty level of the patterns develop as the book progresses.  As a beginner, something I really liked and found helful, is the body and legs follow the same pattern for each animal.  The patterns are written and very easy to follow.  

These are the stuffed body parts for Lucy Hare (first project in the book).  I'm hoping to get it together this week.  The yarn is Mainstay from Walmart.  

It's starting to get light outside, so I think a bit more hand quilting on Cutting by Sarah Fielke and Amy Lobsiger is in order and bird watching at the feeder outside the window.  There's a male cardinal and a couple of purple finches just now....add a cup of tea to the mix and I'll be happy for quite a while!