Poissons d'Avril

 Poissons d'Avril as we say in Quebec, and April Fool's Day in the rest of North America.  I thought the saying came from the cinnamon candies shaped like fish that used to be sold, but I haven't seen them in a long time.  ( I just looked it up on Wikipedia and found this reference:  Although not directly related to Easter, the tradition of “Poisson d’Avril” is followed by all French children on 1 April. Paper fish are used to play an April Fools trick, involving sticking a paper fish onto the back of as many adults as possible, then running away yelling “Poisson d’Avril” (April Fish!)

The joke is on all of us as spring is still nowhere to be found.  Today is the first day in a week that it hasn't snowed, and the sunshine and warmer temps made everyone tilt their faces to the sun.  As a celebration of it being above freezing, many of my co choir members and I met at a resto for fish and chips.  It just seemed appropriate!

I've been playing around in sewing world lately, trying to decide what block I'd like for my turn of the quilting bee.  I did enjoy last month's more challenging (for me) blocks and would like something really "my style" when it comes round to my month.

I started playing with scraps in the same colour and tried different sizes of wonky star, both of which turned out well.  As always, I love blues, but I don't know how an entire quilt of these blocks would look. I used this tutorial for the stars and really like the end result.

I like the look of the stars offset mixed with the central ones.  I think it would be a happy quilt with lots of colour and individuality.  It doesn't show in the pictures, but the two are very different in size.  The original makes a 17.5" block, so I shrunk mine down to 15" for the blue one and 13" for the pink one.

Then I made some oversized flying geese blocks with the idea of having a wild and crazy design with geese going in all directions.  I like the size of the blocks and think it could be fun, but more white is needed to give space to the fabric.  It looks quite muddy even though, individually, I love the fabrics and colours on the left, but there's not enough contrast.

I'll try a few more with whites or lots of white in a pattern and see how they go.

I'm linking up to The Needle and Thread network today, so hop on over to see what everyone is up to.  Let's all keep thinking about warmth and green grass!