Blue Blocks and Quilt Kits

The weekend sure sneaked up on me today! (I like the sound of “snuck”  better than “sneaked”, but it’s not correct according to Google). Wasn’t it just Saturday, like, yesterday? OK, maybe it was a few days ago, but jeez….  So, here we go.

First I framed 8 of the wild animal squares with blue, turning them into 10” blocks. It will take 20 to make a single quilt, and I have enough of the print pieces for 2 quilts. But I’ll be using other colors, like green and yellow and maybe more red or orange to frame them as those colors are called during the year for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

I also sewed up 10 crumb blocks measuring 6.5” each (unfinished). 

Additionally, I sewed up some 4” crumb blocks, but I’ll show those next week when they’re sewn into the “candy” blocks. 

Since I spent the better part of two days this week cutting and assembling five Zipper Quilt kits for the Salt Lake Chapter of Quilts for Kids, I have to show those as well. 

As I’ve mentioned before, each of these kits uses up 3.5 yards of fabric, so these represent a stash reduction of 17.5 yards. Wahoo! Some of the backing fabric was purchased by me, but most of it this time around came from generous donors. Thank you!

And, in preparation for a mini quilting frenzy next week, I basted three quilts this week. Technically, the zipper quilt in the middle was basted before, but when my back-up machine Bob went berserk while quilting it, I had to unpick that quilting, remove the pins and start all over. 

So, after my final New Owner class today, Nina (my new machine’s new name. Thanks, Astrid!) and I will begin our quilting journey together!

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The following story is unrelated to quilting, so you can skip this if you want….

Last Monday we and a few of our neighbors had a nice meeting at a local Starbucks with the demolition contractor who is handling the clearing of the large site behind our street. About a month ago, as a storm front was moving in and it was rainy and very windy, some corrugated sheet metal panels came partially loose from the back wall of the furniture store they were tearing down. The panels were flapping in the wind, threatening to (1) blow into either our house and our neighbor’s house, or (2) fly into the electrical lines between our homes and the wall. The demolition crew were Johnny-on-the-spot and rushed their excavators over to hold the panels securely with the claws at the end of the long articulated arms. Four of them, lined up along the wall like metal ballerinas. But it was only a temporary fix, and they decided to knock down the wall instead.

Now, there were three remaining walls that were still standing throughout this multi acre site. They were all outside walls of various buildings, and all composed of cinder blocks filled with pelleted polystyrene insulation - styrofoam bits. The plan was to knock each wall down in its entirety all at once, preventing the pellets from spreading. So, with the above metal panels threatening to take flight, they decided to knock that wall down. Well, the wall broke halfway down instead of fully collapsing. The flying metal threat was eliminated, but polystyrene pellets rained down on our houses and neighborhood thanks again to the wind. It looked like tiny hail, or cherry blossoms. Mayday! They called in the Murray City experts and the health department, who ran tests to verify that it was non-toxic. And then the clean-up began. The City brought in street sweeping vehicles and the demolition company had people shoveling areas of accumulation. It was still rainy and cold. Later that evening, a crew came around and shop-vac’ed our driveways and front walkways. 

There are still lots of the pellets remaining, and the meeting I mentioned above was to let us know that as soon as weather permits, they’ve hired a landscaper to come and remove all the pellets from our yards. They’ll suck it all up with a shop vac, replace soil where necessary, and de-thatch the grass areas. It was nice to meet the demo company owners. They had gone around the neighborhood to collect our names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, and have kept us informed every step of the way. The meeting was primarily for everyone to meet and be reassured that they will do everything possible to “make us whole”. They seem to be a very honest, hard-working and reputable company, and we know we’re in good hands!

Oh, and in the interim, the remaining walls have come down - wow! Like an earthquake!! But that’s OK - at least there were no more styrofoam pellets!