Chasing Squirrels

It was another beautiful autumn week here in the Salt Lake Valley. The daytime temperatures were in the low 70’s and evening temps in the high forties/low fifties, and more of the same is forecast for the next ten days. It normally would be cooler and wetter, but these aren’t normal weather patterns anymore. Regardless, I’m not going to complain. The extended nice weather is helping us to button  up all the outside work before it gets cold.

This week we pulled everything out of the vegetable garden except the tomatoes. They’re still producing, slowly, so we’ll let them stay on the vine to grow until we get a frost warning. This morning our arborist is coming (he’s actually here now)  to prune trees and trim bushes as well as to cut back the grape arbor and the Concord grape vine and climbing roses along our back wall. The wall separates our lot from a commercial property that was a large furniture store. The furniture store was vacated and sold early last year, and after a year of zoning changes, public meetings and revised plans, the building will be demolished at the beginning of November. The property was changed to a medium-density housing site, and two-story townhomes will be built. That’s no higher than the furniture store was, and is much preferable to commercial or high-density housing (apartments). All of that info is just to say that while they’re tearing down the old building, I hope they tear out the dang cypress bushes on their side of the wall that are half dead!

Between all the yard things and the exciting January 6 Committee Hearing, I was antsy, or should I say “squirrelly”? Yes, I did do my 60 string blocks this week as planned. I’m keeping on track toward 300 string blocks by the end of the month. But everything else was much more fun…

Let’s get the strings out of the way first. Our Quilts for Kids chapter uses them in sets of 15 along with 15 blocks of a solid color, and fabric for two borders. They make kits with those components for members to sew into quilt tops. Here are my four sets of 15 blocks on the right. The left stack is the blocks made previously.

Here is Alfie, my supervisor, checking out my progress. Apparently, 180 six-inch string blocks stacked up on top of each other measure 6”. Satisfactory. Carry on.

The highlight of the sewing week was finishing the quilting, binding and labeling of the quilt top Circle of Stars donated to me for QFK by dear McGill U in South Carolina.

I absolutely adore the variety of colors. Can you see the circles that the eye perceives from the star points through the nine patches? Circle of Stars measures 63” square.

The quilting is merely serpentine stitching in a vertical line so as not to take away from the beautiful piecing. But it adds a lot of nice texture. And the backing! I love the beautiful two-toned blue floral.

This quilt will make some teenage young lady very happy! Thank you, McGill! 

So after McGill’s quilt was finished, and in breaks from stitching strings, I couldn’t seem to focus on my planned list of sewing tasks for the week. I was supposed to pin baste 4 quilt tops. Meh. Let the pile grow a little more (as if 17 tops weren’t enough). Or start on my green RSC string blocks. What?!? More strings?!? Not this week, thank you. So, maybe I’ll do my green Little Bricks block (pattern courtesy of Sylvia at Treadlestitches) for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. October is light and bright greens. 

I had a ton of green scraps and strips in 2 ½” widths. Long story short, I calculated that I could easily make a 42x48” top for Quilts for Kids with 56 blocks in green. I found a partial jelly roll of Kona Snow for the background and away I went! They were chain pieced in about 2-3 hours. So, here are the blocks, soon to be assembled into a quilt top.

And then another squirrel came scampering by. This squirrel was a little bag of purple, green and brown scraps in the form of quarter-square triangles and strips, plus about a half yard of green solid. There were enough triangles to make 10 blocks, but I’ll only use 9. The other block will go into the Orphanage. This is what the mess looks like now, pinned up on the design wall.

It still needs some additions and tweaking. I ran out of the solid green and may have to use some white or lavender to beef it up, especially lengthwise. The leafy fabric on the left, which I used as a backing on another quilt recently, is the last of that print and will be a perfect backing. Stay tuned for progress on this mess next week.

Time to go hit the showers! We have a family brunch later this morning - our DGD Lauren is down from college this weekend and we’re celebrating.