2020 Celebrating, Scrappy Dresdens, Colourful Cardinal and Flowers

Are you doing something special the 20th of each month this year?
 Many people are since this kind of number doesn't happen often- just once every century...1818, 1919, 2020.  Some are buying a little gift for someone, a flower for themselves, a special dinner or dessert, a treat in some way to mark being alive and kicking in this remarkably numbered year, I guess.  What do you think?

I have about half of the scrappy Dresdens sewn together so basically half a flimsy.  The plan is to set this up to begin hand stitching the quilting lines this week.  With it in two pieces I can manage it, kind of an extra large quilt as you go experiment.  I just can't handle large quilt sized pieces but I'm happy this project is moving along in its own way.

After I get this all sewn, I hope to start piecing together the basket blocks this week.

 I took ages to find a shade of red fabric that matched the cross stitched Cardinal and then a piece to match that.  Here is what I've made so far.  Sadly I don't think my stitches are as good as when I worked this one just about 10 years ago I think.

 Think I will keep adding to make a small cushion. Thanks once again for the suggestions and Wendy at Pieceful Thoughts (who has a cat, Wilbur, who is very helpful with her quilting; Murphy is useless) for this particular one... as a bowl filler which sounds like a great idea but I'd already made it this big.  I'll try to remember that as I have more of these small cross stitched and embroidered pieces tucked away.

I continue to be happy enough with my progress on my large cross stitching  piece, Swirling Flowers...a few more of the motifs are finished and I'm onto the last two final sections.

 Our monthly SAL hosted by Avis at Sewing Beside the Sea is catching up with each other again this week.  Lovely stitching  from all over the world.
Avis, Claire, Gun, Carole, Sue, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Megan, Deborah, Mary Margaret, Renee, Carmela, Jocelyn, Sharon, Daisy, Anne, Connie, AJ

A goal from before Christmas -I have all my photos sorted and uploaded onto my new Acer. Whew, that turned out to be a much bigger job than I would have guessed.  I had accumulated over 5000 photos and wound up discarding many in the process. I do take all the photos of animals, birds and flowers I share here, unless otherwise noted. Having a blog has encouraged my photography efforts and I'm thankful for that.
Also thankful to link this post with Quilting is More Fun Than Housework,  Elm Street Quilts, The Madd Quilter, Life in Pieces, Love Laugh Quilt, Pretty Piney, Home Sewn By Us and Kathy's Quilts.