Rainy days and Mondays always get me down

Happy Leap Day! 

I know it's not Monday, but it is raining cats and dogs here today, so much so that the dog will not even leave the porch long enough to do his business.  He trots off nonchalantly at first and then when he is in the yard for a minute, he runs right back onto the porch and gives me that look like  - you want me to do what out there in this rain?!!!  What are you nuts?!     Good news is that it is supposed to get colder so the rain will eventually let up.  Bad news is that it is possible for getting messy out there later with ice/snow.    Good news is that it has been a mild winter. 

So in my perusing the blogs the last few days I see everyone talking about taking advantage of this extra day this year to work on some projects, take some time to pamper yourself with this extra day, etc...   Honestly, this day has started out like any other day in my house, so I can only hope that there is time this evening to sew.  I wanted to take a quick trip to a new fabric store (well new to me) not far from home, hopefully getting done with work a little early to as to make it there before closing, but I can't tell as yet if that will happen.  They are only open weekdays, so Saturdays are out.  I have been wanting to go there for a while, so I hope I can make time to get there. 

My current project is a string quilt inspired from this blog site : http://heartstringsquiltproject.com/.  I have had some blue, white, and yellow fabrics in my stash for quite a while waiting for just the right quilt to come along to use them, and this is what I decided to try.  Another idea I came across on the web was to use old phone book pages as the foundations for these squares.  I decided to give it a try and I love it.  It tears away so easily afterwards.  I started out with a 7-inch square and then folded in half on the diagonal.

After cutting strips various widths from my fabrics, I then decided to make yellow the focal point of each middle of the square.  

With the yellow pinned down in the center of the square on the diagonal, I could then add my other strips to either side, working on one half at a time.

I chose to press (not iron) as i went along.  Once the square was covered, I could then trim down to size.  I chose 6-1/2 inches as my choice of size.  Using a square ruler this exact size made this trimming a cinch.  Lining the ruler up on the square, making sure that the yellow strip was centered and that the square that would be cut out was also centered over the paper backing, I trimmed away.

I now have 48 squares completed and I am thinking of arranging them 6 squares wide by 8 squares long and then achieving the size I am happy with by adding coordinating borders.    That's my project for now.  I will try to keep it updated as I progress. 

Enjoy your leap day and the extra time it hopefully brings to you!