Monday, April 12, 2010

Lots of Activity

This past week was very busy. First on my
schedule was finishing the wall hanging, since that had been promised for a banquet and auction on Saturday evening. I did a few things to make this wall hanging better than the one before. The first change was to paper piece each square. Then when I sewed them together I alternated the pressing of the seams. That way I could securely "nest" the seams into each other. It worked very well, and I had to do minimum amounts of fixing points to match. Of course, that careful paper piecing and trimming took a lot more time than sewing the squares together the way I showed you for the original wall hanging, but I thought the tradeoff was worth the effort.

Tuesday and Wednesday evening I sewed blocks together, and Thursday at our country quilting group I finished putting the top together. Friday at home I cut and applied the borders. That evening I did the machine quilting, a very simple stitch-in-the-ditch around each of the teal centers, along with a stitch in the ditch inside the orange border, and then one inside the outer teal border. That outer border is 4" wide, and needed some sort of quilting in it.

I decided to use a simple extension of the lines in the quilt, done in an orange thread. The result was just right. Some stitching, but not too obtrusive.

Saturday morning I started tying in the loose ends by hand. I sewed on the binding, and had time to stitch it down in the back by hand. The project was completely finished at 12:50, much too close to the deadline for comfort!!!

Andrew came and picked it up. I put a little explanation with it, and put on a reserve bid of $60. I really didn't want to see it go for less than that.

Our helper S. went to the banquet/auction, so she was able to tell me today that the quilt went for $90. She hesitated when I asked who bought it, and finally admitted SHE had! S. thought it should have sold for more, and was ready to pay more for it, but the other bidder dropped out. I'm delighted that it went to her, and quite satisfied with the $90. that it brought in for the team to the Philippines. Altogether a happy ending!

In the meantime, on Thursday we saw the storm clouds gather around 5 p.m. We had great hopes for some rain, or even snow, as the ground is terribly dry. What we got, from about 6 p.m. on was WIND, WIND, WIND, and horizontally-driven snow. Of course, we began to be concerned about the greenhouses. Some years ago we stood at the window and watched a heavy wind rip the plastic roof off the big greenhouse. It was a disaster! So with the extreme wind we were experiencing, we were very concerned. But disaster struck from another corner: the power went off.

We have two gas furnaces in the biggest greenhouse, but they don't work without power. We had kerosene heaters for emergencies, but THEY don't work without power. Jim phone our neighbor L., and he came through that terrible storm to bring us a propane heater that would operate on its own. Thank goodness for good neighbors!

Then Jim phone our electrician, who happened to be stranded in Calgary by the storm. But he arranged for two of his helpers here to bring over a generator and wire it into the one furnace. Saved!!!

The power came back on about 10:15, but we kept the generator running all night, just in case of another failure.

The next morning Jim came back from his early morning inspection all smiles. Everything was hunky-dory in the greenhouses. But the wind continued to howl until early Sunday morning.

We've had quite cold weather since, and just an hour ago it started snowing again, but without the heavy winds. We're hoping for lots of moisture from this!

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