Signs of Spring

This week we are guests in our own home. We are (slowly) painting our bedroom, and it's easier to just move into the guest room than try to sleep in the midst of chaos as we move furniture back and forth. We picked a great week for painting. The temperatures reached 70F today, so the windows were open and we could hear the birds singing for the first time in months. Spring fever, for sure! (The downside is that the quality of light is fantastic which means I can see all of the dust from the winter EVERYWHERE, so this is also turning into a major spring cleaning.) We're half done--maybe a little more considering we've got the two more difficult walls (lots of trim and a little alcove) done. Here's how it looks so far:

Paint paraphernalia 

Still life? What an assortment of stuff on the dresser--vases, lotion, paper towel, dust rag, my husband's Carlton Fisk statue. You know how it is when you're painting.

One more quick picture:

Maybe this is a little closer to the true color. I spent a lot of time trying to find a green that was neither too yellow nor too blue and that looked good with our light trim and dark furniture. I think I did pretty well. What sold me on it was a picture of it on one of those websites where you could see it in a virtual room. On the bed were pillows in light turquoise, yellowish green and salmon. Delicious. And now I have a color scheme for a bed runner. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I still have some other quilts to finish first. I did do a tiny bit of quilt work this week. 

If you look closely, you can see three bits of dry sand I added between the wet sand and the beginnings of the dunes. Hey, it took longer than it looks--there was some seam ripping involved. 

I also worked a bit on this pile of quilt:

That's all I could manage. After all, our guest room  my sewing room is in use at the moment.

(By the way, does anyone have any ideas for what to do with left over thread cones? 

I'm going through a lot of thread. I used one to wind some binding that was waiting for a quilt, but what else might I do besides recycle them?)

I got so pumped up for spring today that I did take the little decorative snowman sign out of our yard (the two big snows of the last two weeks miraculously disappeared overnight so the snowman just had to go), and I replaced the little winter quilt on the front door with another one I found in a closet. It used to be in our half-bath--matched the Susan Winget wallpaper border (quilts on a clothesline).. 

I also took down my Poinsettia wall hanging and put up this one:

Sorry, crooked picture--I'll blame it on spring fever.

I know, technically it's a snowball quilt, but it IS in spring colors. And there are flowers in the quilting.

After we finish painting this week, I'm going to concentrate on the Big Quilt and the Lake Michigan Quilt. Then I'll work on something for the bedroom, and if that's not incentive to finish the other projects, I don't know what is. 

I'm linking up with Freemotion by the River, Sew Fresh Quilts and My Quilt Infatuation this week for their linky parties. Buttons are on the right. 

Have a great week, and I hope that you are enjoying whatever the seasonal changes are where you're living.