Tuesdays and Turtles

Another rainy day forecast here so I made sure to get my walk in early.  I was expecting the overcast sky to get darker and to get caught in the rain, but unfortunately, it started to break up with some blue sky and got hotter so I had to take the full walk.  Just my luck …

But I did see this cute little guy in the road:

I don’t know if he was escaping all of the accumulated water or what – this is one of the usually dry and grassy ditches near me that shows how wet it's been the last couple of days:

So I *rescued* the box turtle and put him on the grass to save him from being run over (although it wasn’t such a busy road, there are teenage drivers near there that have lead feet,  if you know what I mean):

Anyway, he was still where I put him on my way back by 15 minutes later (with his head out), so he must have thought his new spot was ok.

On a quilty note, one of my on-line quilt guild members posted a great link to a YouTube video tutorial put out by the Missouri Quilt Company:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJCSoljKnqU

The lesson is for making quick, scrappy 4-patches.  Well, I’m always up for a new technique that promises to be faster than my current methods so I thought I’d try this one out with a kit that I had purchased with a 50% off coupon.  The kit had 10 different tropical-type floral prints so first I selected some solids that would blend or match to get a more scrappy look:

Second, I cut 5” squares and sewed them on two sides per the tutorial, then I pressed them and cut them in half per the instructions: 

Before cutting them into the rectangles for 4-patches, I thought I’d lay them out to see if I was achieving the scrappy look:

Hey!  I kind of like the rectangles as they are.  I have enough fabric to make a top with rectangles and then continue on to make one with 4-patches.  I might just do that!  We’ll see what develops …