A couple of weeks ago my husband and I pulled out our bicycles and took them the to car wash to knock years of accumulated dirt and dust off them.  Afterwards he asked me if I remembered how to ride a bike.

I hopped up on it and the promptly fell down without gaining my balance, dragging the bike with me.  My knee and elbow were scraped up pretty good and I had a nasty bruise on my elbow, but a few days of acetaminophen and a visit to the chiropractor and I was, perhaps not good as new, but at least willing to try again.

But first the bikes needed a tune up and the seat lowered!

Tonight we picked up our bikes.  After dinner we found a nice flat parking lot (next to a hospital).  I think I figured it out!

We didn’t ride long.  I think this video is less than 60 seconds.  I maybe rode for another 3 or 4 minutes.  We didn’t want to over do it.  This after all the first time in I know 13 years and probably closer to 20 or 25 that we’ve been on bicycles.

The forecast is for rain, so I don’t know if we’ll get out tomorrow or not.

Last month I did some Faux Applique — essentially coloring on fabric with a soft colored pencil, sealing it with textile medium and finishing it with some embroidery.  Helen Stubbing does amazing work with this technique.

But do you notice the seal around the lid of my bottle of Textile Medium?  My work is not sealed — apparently I used my bottle of Floating Medium.  Oops.  I’m just glad  I discovered this before I put the two blocks in my quilt top and washed them.

These are half of this month’s UFO.  The Christmas Tress.  I still need to make the Church block

On the wall proper are my Just Take Two Blocks that I worked on last week.  About all that has changed is that I have some of these blocks sewn together.  The blocks on the left – except for the flying geese are from April 1st.  I still need to get the compass block done from March 15th then I can sew the section together.

The Eeyore quilt is stalled.  I really need to get back to it, but I got side tracked on the block that I’m making for the Red, White & Blue Blog Hop in July.  I can’t show that yet, so I thought to get something up on the wall that I can show and that is new, I would work on a couple of this month’s UFO blocks.

How hard could this block possibly be?

The instructions indicated the block could be paper pieced.  As much as I’m not a fan of paper piecing, I thought ‘cool’.  I printed my foundation papers (I need two trees a red one and a green one), found my fabric and started to work on the block.

This is as far as I got.  Do you see the problem?  Let me get closer…

The first two rows went together just fine.  I got the tree fabric for the third row on and it’s OK as well.  But there’s no way to go further. I need two seams on the next fabric — the one I have pinned on the right and the one on the bottom.

I pulled the instructions out to see what I was doing wrong.  The instructions show the first two rows, then stop.  Uh… did anyone attempt to paper piece this block completely?

Well, I guess I’ll pull out the templates and start over.

In the meantime, I think I’ll check out the design walls linked up at Patchwork Times.

This week I worked on my Just Takes Two blocks and the block I’ll be showing during the Red, White and Blue Blog Hop in July.   I managed to use a tad over a yard, but that’s because I WAY over cut when I do paper piecing.

Fabric Added Last Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added to Date:  59.338 yards

Fabric Used Last Week: 1.273 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 37.918 yards

Net Used for the year -21.42 yards

Check out how others are doing with their stashes over at Patchwork Times.

Friday night was Stitch & Chat at Quilted Memories.  Since the Double Wedding Ring has been sitting in the laundry basket since February, I decided to take it to work on.  I was able to get two melon sections stitched.  Only one more row to go!

In addition to finishing this month’s UFO, I want to make progress on my JT2 blocks.  I think as of June 1st I was 19 blocks behind.  My goal was to get 6 pieced (or paper pieces) blocks done.  Tonight I upped the ante.  I finished this applique block.  I have one more pieced block to get done, but even if I don’t get another one done, I’ve accomplished more this week than I have in the past 2 1/2 months.

Now I’m only 13 blocks behind.

Last nightI decided I needed to do some mindless piecing.  These blocks are from different sets of the Just Takes Two blocks released since mid-March.  As much as I would like to do them in order, at this point I think simply getting them done is more important so I don’t fall even further behind.

The block on the left is just glue basted in place.  It needs to be stitched down and of course the center section appliqued as well.

This is Autumn Splendor, the quilt top my brother-in-law picked out for me to complete for him.  I hope to get a better picture of it before I give it away, but I’m still too stiff to climb on anything to hang it.

The washed quilt measures 60 x 74.  The pattern is Crazy 8 by Bits ‘n Pieces.  I used Warm ‘n Natural batting, Superior So Fine! # 735 – Bush Ranger (Black-Gold-Orange-Green) in the top and nearly two Bottom Line pre-wound “brown” bobbins.

It’s quilted in an all over free-hand ivy design.  I quilted it on a Nolting 24″ machine at Quilted Memories.

This post tells a little bit about the fabrics I used for the top. This post shows a bit of the quilting.

I had great hopes of showing a completed quilt this morning, but I decided to see if I bounce as well now as I did 25 years ago when falling off a bicycle.  The short answer is No.    I’ve got a scraped knee and elbow and I’m moving a bit slower than normal, but other than that I’m OK.  I’m not deterred.  I will get back up on the bicycle and I will get the binding done on this quilt.  My guess is the binding will be done first.

In the meantime I’m going to check out what others have on their design walls by following the links over at Patchwork Times.