Design assistance

I know he thinks he's being helpful, but he's laying on top of 2 paper plates with hexies.  He was sleeping under the piano across the room, but as soon as I began to lay these down he waddled right over and plopped down in the midst of my project.  And when a 20 pound cat stretches out for a nap he takes up considerable real estate.

Winter returned

This is our back deck this morning, and it's still snowing.  Officially we got 16.5" of snow since Wednesday on top of rain and then ice.  Our house is U-shaped and this deck is protected in the U.  Plus we have 60 trees in our yard so it really is fairly well protected unless the wind is out of the south.  On the north side of the house the snow is hip deep on my 6' husband in places on our driveway. He is out there now (on his 65th birthday) wrestling with the snowblower trying to clear the driveway and then sidewalks.  No snowplow has come through our street yet either so we aren't going anywhere today, unless it's much later.  

Considering the impact a storm like this has on livestock, we have it really easy. I do remember how much work it was to keep our cattle safe when we still farmed.  And it's the middle of calving season around here. 

For comparison - this was yesterday morning - before we got the wind along with additional snow. 

Snow storm sewing time

Yesterday's ice storm turned into a blizzard over night, with lots of wet snow sticking to everything on top of a thick layer of ice.  That meant I wasn't going anywhere today, and freed up some time to sew.  The temptation to begin a new project was very strong.  But I looked at the UFO projects hanging around and decided to work on the Halloween One Block Wonder that was on my UFO list for February - with no progress. 

All of the hexie halves for this project are now sewn and ready to lay out with the panel.  I chose a Halloween fabric panel for this OBW that has a larger scale design, so I cut the strips slightly larger than the pattern book recommends.  These were cut 4.5" so the hexies are large.  And some of them have very interesting looks to them.  A bowl of lettuce and an orange slice come to mind with these two.  And some are a bit too monochromatic, but I think they will blend together nicely with the panel.  

The new blocks are in the stack on the left and the blocks made during the class I took are in the stack on the right.  The panel is folded up on top.  And this clears off a nice bit of horizontal surface in my sewing room for now.  Each pair of hexies is lying on a paper plate so they should be easy to lay out and rearrange on the floor, which is my next step.  I think this could end up being a very large quilt.  

As for the weather, it began here Tuesday evening with rain that continued most of the day on Wednesday.  By supper time it began to freeze.  Those little icicles formed all along the edges of our deck railings.  You can even see the layer of ice on top of the railing.  It was pretty, but we know this was also happening on tree branches and power lines.  Our lights flickered a few times during the day but did stay on.  We were luckier than a lot of people in this part of South Dakota who did lose power.  

And this was what we awoke to see this morning.  We now have about 12" of fresh wet snow, which is half of what they predicted we could get before this ends tomorrow.  But it's taking its toll on our trees.  Our house sits on a lot that is just over an acre and has 60 trees on it.  One of the biggest ones is an ash just outside our family room windows. And one huge branch was hanging so low this morning that it was nearly touching the windows. So my husband went out and knocked a lot of snow and ice off that branch.  But it hasn't lifted back up by much so we're concerned that the branch will come down with this wind, or need to be cut later.  He also plans to go out now and blow the snow from the driveway before the second half of this storm hits us this afternoon.    

A brown bag

It's always fun to put those final stitches into any project and that happened for the brown floral Sew Together bag.  A little label and a zipper pull added some little extra touches to this one.  I'm hoping the knitter this one is going to will enjoy it.  I'll get it in the mail to her next week. 

The ends and lining are peach with dark brown stitching.  Those pocket sections gave me fits on this bag, including broken needles. But in the end it turned out fine.

In the past 3 weeks, both of these Sew Together bags were finished from the kits I had cut.  Two more full kits remain, plus I found another bag front that I had made from selvages as a class sample a couple of years ago when I taught this class at The Pin Cushion. So that makes a third one in the UFO/WIP list. But I think it's time to work on something else for awhile.  

Closing in on another finish

Another Sew Together bag is nearly finished.  I took this photo just before adding the top zipper and handles unit.  So now I'm watching the  Baylor and Notre Dame women play in the NCAA women's basketball championship - and doing the hand stitching to finish this bag.  

Then maybe next week I can dig into my April UFO Challenge projects.  The number drawn was 5 and I have 3 projects on my list under #5: a set of 2 Minion pillowcases, a pillow top with a camper block from Lori Holt's designs (needs quilting), and my large Farm Girl Vintage blocks need to become quilt tops.  Just deciding which project to pull out might be the hardest thing.  Or I could go back and work on a couple of UFO projects from previous months.  What to do, what to do?

RSC19 - aqua kitty

Some lunch hour sewing and my aqua cat block is complete.  I really like the yellow heart on this one.  But it wasn't without some seam ripper time.  When I was doing a final pressing on the completed block, I noticed that one of the 1" squares was sewn onto the wrong corner of an aqua rectangle just under the cat's collar.  Oops!!  But it didn't take long and I had that replaced.  

Now I'm going to get back to working on the brown floral Sew Together bag.  I had time to sew the end sections together and got 1 of the 3 zippers into the pocket sections today.  But rest will have to wait as I have things to work on for both of my part time jobs this afternoon.  

Design Wall Monday

What's on your design wall today?  Mine has various blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  RSC19 color for April is aqua and I had some fun this morning with my stash of aqua fabrics.  Check out a few more at: http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/

The 6.5" flower block is from Lori Holt's Spelling Bee book.  I love how the aqua block turned out and it fits right in with the other colors.  Right now I have no idea what I'll do with these blocks but they so cute that I know they will speak to me at some point.

The rainbow string blocks have been accumulating since last year, so there are colors not selected yet for 2019.  There are actually 13 blocks in that stack.  Each of them is squared up to 9.5" and I'm thinking that I'll sash them with black to make the colors pop.  These will make a good donation quilt for a child most likely. 

There was enough of this aqua Grunge dot left from the border of my OBW quilt to make another Ohio Star.  These blocks are 10.5", and again I have no idea exactly what they might become. But that's OK isn't it?  

I've also pulled the aqua fabrics to make my cat block.  It will have a bright yellow heart.  I might even have time to work on the cat block yet today.  Plus I need to get back to work on the brown floral bag I'm making.  Sounds like some good goals for the week.