Cats and Red Scraps

Another busy week here, how about with you? If you have kids in school (online or in person), you’re probably way busier than you want to be. For us retirees, that’s not a factor. But this week did have us running errands (as usual), picking and processing garden vegetables (as usual, but the end is in sight), and going to appointments. Bruce’s myo-electric arm needed some adjustments, and they’ll have it for four days next week to work on an issue.

The highlight of the week, sarcastically speaking, was the annual visit to the vets for Alfalfa and Darla. Bruce and I dread it from the moment we make the appointment; the cats only dread it from the moment the cat carrier comes out a day or two beforehand. Darla is a cagey one, no pun intended. If you even look her in the eye while the carrier is out, she’ll run and hide under the bed. Alfie isn’t as spooked by it. But on the day of their appointment, I couldn’t find either one at lunchtime, and their appointment was at 4:00.  So at about 2-ish I laid down for a nap on the bed, and sure enough, my feline napping companions joined me. And they were still zonked out at 3:40 when Bruce and I each grabbed one and lowered them into their carrier. We turn the carrier upright so we can just lower them into it, using gravity to our advantage. We took the Little Rascals to a new vet clinic because the old vet we went to for years moved away and we’re not going to hoof it across town to follow them. And I didn’t care for one of the doctors at the old place, so it was time to make a change. We’re really glad we did.  The people at the new clinic were wonderful and friendly. Alfie has gained over a pound in the last year, though, so I had to have a talk with him about not wanting to grow into a pony, like Buddy. Alfie pointed out the irony of me telling him to lose weight. Both kitties got their feline leukemia shots and a clean bill of health. 

After we returned home, Alfie decided he liked the new rug at the front door, which was also a purchase on one of my errands this week.  The wind storm of last week tore apart the back door mat, so I needed to replace that. While there, a few little rugs jumped into my cart to replace some of the older worn ones in the house. It’s a nice little refresh for autumn. 

Darla decided to take a nap.  That girl can sleep... and snore. I got the cutest video of her sleeping and snoring, but I’ve been unable to upload it to Blogger. *sigh*

This week in my red sewing, I first tackled the International Sisters blocks. My friend Preeti had sent me several blocks that she’d sewn with a dark gray background. We both agreed that the color and the angles of the background pieces were distracting from the Sisters. So, she sent me the blocks as a gift and I frogged them, replacing the dark gray with Kona Snow which is the background color I’m using for all my International Sister blocks.  

The red sister on the left, below, was made from African fabric sent to me by my hilarious friend (Hurricane) Sally . The fussy cut dress turned out so cool. The Sister on the right was made from my red scrap stash. 

The next three Sisters were all made from African fabric remnants brought over to me from Kenya by my Kenyan friend Marilyn, who runs Harambe Humanitarian. 

I’m particularly pleased at how the following block’s fabric placement worked out.

And here are all seven Sisters for this month.

I have dozens and dozens of these blocks made, so I need to start assembling some of the wall hangings if I can spare time away from Christmas sewing.

But I did take time this week to try out the waffle blocks that I saw on Nann’s blog.  These aren’t even trimmed yet, but I think they’ll work nicely as one of my Rainbow Scrap projects for 2021.

Each 5.5” quadrant is made with three 1.5x5.5” strips and ten 1.5” squares. I have a ton (well, maybe only a half ton) of those 1.5” squares, so this will be a great way to use them up. Obviously, the four quadrants need to be sewn together to yield one 10.5” (unfinished size) block.

And here are the four Tyrol blocks I sewed during the week. 

That brings my total to 16 of the 20 blocks needed. I want to get those done in the coming week and begin the sashing process. My daughter-in-law Kim and I will be shopping next week for the backing fabric. 

Last but not least is my progress on the red Creature quilt. I always save these quilts until I’ve done all my regular block sewing so I know what scraps and orphan blocks I have to play with. Most of this is just pinned or slapped up on the design wall at this point. There are a few blank spots to be filled in and at least a couple more horizontal strips to add some length. All I know at this point is that the width will be 42 inches. 

I ended up making one more cracker block for a total of 8. That gave me two of them for each corner, so I played with them and came up with this (below). I had to add 1” strips to the corner strip blocks to bring them up to size, but I love the serendipitous play of the angles and colors in this top right corner. 

That's it for this week, but I would like to remind you that the Fall 2020 Quilty Orphan Adoption event is going on over at Cynthia’s blog, Quilting is More Fun Than Housework. I have an orphan up for adoption which you can see there (or in my last blog post). I also have a large batch of selvages to give away, and we’ve added those to Cynthia’s selvage giveaway. She’ll be selecting TWO adopters, so if you’re interested in those, please check out her blog post there and leave a comment on her post. 

I think that just about wraps it up for this week. Please stay safe and remain vigilant about masking up, washing hands and keeping your distance from others while in public. 

Linking up to Scrappy Saturday at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.