The winter storm that was predicted for today arrived right on schedule. It wasn't snowing when we got up this morning, but the wind was strong from the east. An east wind usually means precipitation here, because it blows up against the mountains, and stalls there, dropping its load of moisture. The snowfall started soon after with minuscule flakes. Soon big, fluffy wet flakes were piling up.
A little after 9 a.m. we got the call that the church service was cancelled because of poor road conditions. We had already decided not to try driving today. Church is about 5 miles away, mostly along country roads. So we had oodles of time for a big breakfast: home fried potatoes with onion, pepper and ham, sausage and scrambled eggs, fresh home made bread (75% whole wheat) and homemade cherry jelly. Lots of good hot coffee. Doesn't get better than that!
I finished making the squares for S's quilt this morning, but didn't lay it out on the floor downstairs. There's too much in and out with trays of dirt and small seedlings.
After those squares were finished I thought I'd play around with some materials, just for fun. I had a bag of quite large pieces of black on white, and white on black. Also in that bag were some fairly large pieces of multi coloured cloth. I had in mind to make a quilt with that combination and this morning I decided to cut the black/whites into 6 1/2 inch squares and the multicoloured into 4" squares.
A friend at Quilt Club had made a simple quilt with that combination recently and I really liked the pattern. Here's the 4" squares on the right of the sewing machine. The black and whites were on the left.
Each 4" square has a line drawn diagonally from corner to corner. Lay the 4" square on the corner of the 6 1/2" square and sew the diagonal line. Then turn the square around and sew 1/2" from the line you just sewed. Here's the series of squares with the second line being sewn. Don't bother cutting the thread, just feed square after square into the machine.
When you have a lot sewn, cut them apart. Cut the 4" squares in between the two sewing lines. Press the 1/2 of the 4" square toward the corner. You can see that already done on the right side of the square approaching the needle.
Then repeat the process on the opposite corner of the 6 1/2" square.
This is a really fast process, and between noon and 5 p.m. I made a total of 60 squares. Here's a picture of 40 of them up on the design board. These are only the black on white. Another day I will make up 60 white on black
with the multicoloured corner triangles. The addition of black backgrounds will punch this up quite a bit. Plus, I will carefully edit where the squares end up so that they are better separated from similar background squares.
The bonus: you now have 120 half square triangles to use somewhere in the border. Those are the parts cut off from the 4" squares. They do need to be pressed and "squared up," that is, cut to a uniform size.
This is actually a trial run for the pattern. It's the design I was thinking of use with the lovely batiks that I bought this past week.
A little after 9 a.m. we got the call that the church service was cancelled because of poor road conditions. We had already decided not to try driving today. Church is about 5 miles away, mostly along country roads. So we had oodles of time for a big breakfast: home fried potatoes with onion, pepper and ham, sausage and scrambled eggs, fresh home made bread (75% whole wheat) and homemade cherry jelly. Lots of good hot coffee. Doesn't get better than that!
I finished making the squares for S's quilt this morning, but didn't lay it out on the floor downstairs. There's too much in and out with trays of dirt and small seedlings.
After those squares were finished I thought I'd play around with some materials, just for fun. I had a bag of quite large pieces of black on white, and white on black. Also in that bag were some fairly large pieces of multi coloured cloth. I had in mind to make a quilt with that combination and this morning I decided to cut the black/whites into 6 1/2 inch squares and the multicoloured into 4" squares.
A friend at Quilt Club had made a simple quilt with that combination recently and I really liked the pattern. Here's the 4" squares on the right of the sewing machine. The black and whites were on the left.
Each 4" square has a line drawn diagonally from corner to corner. Lay the 4" square on the corner of the 6 1/2" square and sew the diagonal line. Then turn the square around and sew 1/2" from the line you just sewed. Here's the series of squares with the second line being sewn. Don't bother cutting the thread, just feed square after square into the machine.When you have a lot sewn, cut them apart. Cut the 4" squares in between the two sewing lines. Press the 1/2 of the 4" square toward the corner. You can see that already done on the right side of the square approaching the needle.
Then repeat the process on the opposite corner of the 6 1/2" square.
This is a really fast process, and between noon and 5 p.m. I made a total of 60 squares. Here's a picture of 40 of them up on the design board. These are only the black on white. Another day I will make up 60 white on blackwith the multicoloured corner triangles. The addition of black backgrounds will punch this up quite a bit. Plus, I will carefully edit where the squares end up so that they are better separated from similar background squares.
The bonus: you now have 120 half square triangles to use somewhere in the border. Those are the parts cut off from the 4" squares. They do need to be pressed and "squared up," that is, cut to a uniform size.
This is actually a trial run for the pattern. It's the design I was thinking of use with the lovely batiks that I bought this past week.
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