Sunflower or ?

Did it again - got the "change" bug and made a few changes to a quilt block and came up with my version of sunflower.  The original has white space in the four corners so that there are really only 2 petals in each side and the center is a square.  Then to avoid adding another ufo to my mountain of ufos, I went ahead and finished it into a table topper.  I'm not too thrilled with it.  Since I added a black inner border, I think I should have had dark binding also. But it turned out to be a light green because that was what I used on the backing and I brought it forward to form the binding.  For the backing I was able to use up another orphan block so that makes this ufo#15. I think I like the back better.

I showed it to my husband and he quips up:    "Oh a worm hole!"     Ay ya yi - back to the drawing board.

Well, Summer has finally arrived!

Yep, it's official, a month before Autumn is suppose to start we get our summer which is usually hot, hot, hot.  This was the coolest of summers except for a 5 day span of hot weather way back in late June. Weird.  But here are two surprises at least in my garden from this weather:  a second blooming of our bougainvillea due to water stress and a surprise of naked ladies( I call them pink beauties) earlier than expected - they usually bloom in late Sept for us.

Design Wall Monday 8/16

These blocks WERE on my design wall last week, but I was unable to take a picture to show you.  So in the past week, I put Judy Laquidara's Scraps Ahoy blocks together and came up with another preemie top.  Now the purpose of the pattern was to use up scraps.  Well I had so many scraps left over from cutting the sizes suggested, I decided to use them for the back of this quilt, and for a time I entertained finding some plain back material and make two quilts, but then I just broke down and used the material I made with the scraps as the back.  It's the second picture.  Thanks for the pattern, Judy.  You can see it at her blog Patchwork Times which a button for it is located on the sidebar.

Garden Surprise

I don't pay a lot of attention to when my husband is planting something in the various locations of the yard because he is always planting something in the yard - after all botany is his main interest and hobby.  But as I was getting out of the car, I spied this beauty right to the left of me.  Isn't it spectacular?!  I sat there in the driver's seat a couple of minutes taking in the deep color and the number of flowers.  Then ran inside to get my camera.  DH is looking up the name for me.  I love finding things in bloom in our yard.