Wow 12 days since my last post

 I had lots of helpers this evening, here is Jethro keeping track of the pile on the ironing board, he didn't want me pulling the chain piecing out from under him to iron them. You will see later in this blog what I was ironing........

 Here is Riley, sleeping! He is part of the 16 Muddy Feet gang. My furry Lunatics!!!!!Earlier before I took this picture all 4 of them were running around full speed in my room. When they about knocked the chair over on top of two of them, that is when they mellowed out and all took a nap, and then I remember I actually had my camera still up there to take photos of them. So here are the rest of them too.

 Bailey, guarding the staircase.



Hershey sniffing the scraps that are not quilting fabrics, she steals them out of the basket, and I find them all over the house sometimes.






Reesie just chillin!

 Here is Hershey and Reesie again. Don't they look so innocent?? Ha! Don't let them fool you. Hershey and Riley (the white one)are my two BIG trouble makers. Reesie is the watchdog, while the other 3 are goofing off, she will be alert to every little noise she hears, and she will go investigate them too. All it takes is one bark from her, and the rest are right behind her adding their barks too.

And Bailey again, all curled up in a ball.  She usually lays here, so I can't leave without her knowing it.
She is the oldest at 3.5, Riley and Reesie are 1.5, and Hershey is the youngest, she is almost 9 months old now, but she isn't the littlest, that would be Reesie the watchdog.










Down in the south they have what they call Mardi Gras, well the past 3 weekends we have had Mardi Gras festivities around town. Every year we help our good friends JB & Lori in their Big Bead tent they have. Yesterday was #3, and the 4 of us are all glad it is over. It can get exhausting when you do them all back to back, plus working your fulltime job during the week. Poor JB he needs a relaxing getaway on an island someplace. But even though I have been busy on the weekends helping my friends I have still managed to get a little bit of sewing done over the past 12 days since I last blogged. And I made progress on the endless supply of scraps my room seems to have.

This is actually a laundry hamper, but for years I used it as a scrap holder. It was STUFFED to the max. It was round, and you couldn't pull it out it was so fat. Well it is empty now, I got all the scraps 100% sorted out. At least from this container, only one more 16X16X16 box to go. This worked great as someplace to put the scraps because the shelf above the bag has slots in it, so you could just drop the scraps on top, and they would fall into the bag, to stay for years to come it turned out. Well I am living up to my resolution of getting rid of scraps, and shopping from the stash too. I had some of my scraps sorted, but the colors were sharing bins, and the bins were getting full. So I found some bins at the dollar store the other day, and resorted the sorted ones, and then started on this hamper too. Here are all the new bins on one of my sewing tables.







                                                                                                                                        



Jethro is getting ready to claim his red bin, but sniffing the other ones to decide if he wants to change colors today or not.

















 Here is Jethro hanging out in the red bin, his favorite at this time.Elly didn't hang out upstairs today, because the dogs chased her away. She didn't come back either, found her hanging out with Willow downstairs on the fuzzy blanket.

I started to get caught up on the Block a palooza here is block 5

 and here is Block a palooza block 6

AND Block a palooza Block 7. Still have 8,9,10,11,12 to do and 13 comes out tomorrow!!

I am caught up with the Layer cake quilt along here is block 9. Block 10 comes out on Tuesday.

 This is 2 piles of 2.5 inch squares piled 3 inches high each.......for Raven stars that I cut out finally.

 This is all of the HST sewn together waiting to be ironed.

 This is them all ironed out nicely.

 Here they are sewn with those 2.5 inch squares.

 Here is a full block, for Raven stars, now I have 41 more to go to finish the quilt top. I still have to finish cutting out the white that goes with the blue triangles though. But it is coming along quickly. I am ready for some of these quilt alongs to be over with, because it is camping season, and I don't want to get even farther behind when I start camping out on the weekends. Haven't touched my Dorinda, and I am 3 clues behind on that one as of tomorrow. Maybe I will just have to pick one day and only work on that one! Rainbow Scraps challenge color is green this month, haven't decided if I am making anything or not. I don't care for green, unless it is outdoors or in my pocket. The Monochromatic challenge is Brown this month, I have hardly any brown, so that one won't be happening either this month. I am almost done with the purple yo-yo project I started last month. Hopefully will have that one done by the end of the month, need to order something to finish it. But for the UFO challenge, it is quilt number 1 which is my Black White & Red quilt, I got the 12th block pieced (forgot to take pic). My youngest daughter wants that quilt, so I have been looking for fabric for the back, and trying to decide how to piece the top together. Probably on point to make it bigger, might have to put a few more blocks together as well. But I should have the top at least done by the end of the month.The whole thing depends on if I can find suitable fabric for the backing. I got quite a few more of my string blocks done for the RRCB too. I will have a HUGE celebration when I sew the last one of those. I soooo dislike string blocks!!!!

Over at Freckled Whimsy a week or so ago she blogged about these carpet replacement blades that fit the Olfa 45mm cutters. At the time they were on sale $1.49 for a 2 pack!! They are $1.79 as of this post. I jumped on over to Harbor Freight and ordered 5 packs. So with shipping I paid about $14.00 for 10 blades, sure beats the heck out of the price of $7.99 PER blade around town! You never realize how dull your blade really is until you change it out. Then it is watch out fingers because the blade fly's down the side of the ruler. I have since read about this same thing on about 4 other blogs I follow. Wonder what those guys over at Harbor Freight are thinking with all of a sudden huge surge in carpet replacement blade sales! Shhhhh don't tell them quilters use them, they will raise the price on them. Well I think I made up for missing the blog last week I normally try to post. What are you working on today???