Today my friend Ruby and I will be attending the Hands Off! Rally in Salt Lake City. We’ll be joined by thousands of people there and at 9 other venues just in the red podunk State of Utah. Rallies will be held today in hundreds of locations throughout all 50 states in the USA. The link above to Hands Off! Is where you can check to find a location near you. These rallies are meant to be peaceful protest gatherings to tell Trump and Musk to keep their hands off…. you name it: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, HUD, CDC, NIH, NPR, PBS, HHS - a whole alphabet of departments and agencies that affect our daily lives. Oh heck, can we add the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P to it? This Administration Regime is a total clusterF**, or as Bruce calls it, a “Cluster Foxtrot”. It will take this country years, if not decades, to recover from the damage that those two blackguards have wrought in the last 75 days. The world’s trust in the USA will take well beyond our lifetimes to rebuild. It’s a pitiful state of affairs.
Despite the train wreck that this week was nationally, I managed to get some sewing done. Not as much as I’d hoped, though, because I had an HOA newsletter to get out, a dentist appointment (semi-annual cleaning and check-up; no cavities for either of us!), some sewing for a friend (long story that I won’t go into, but I did get a wonderful new houseplant in thanks), lots of errands, and a deep cleaning of my sewing studio. Oy!
The month of April will be dedicated to sewing our RED scraps in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC). I did get to spend some time on Wednesday afternoon sorting scraps and cutting pieces for my RSC blocks this month, and even managed to sew up the easiest ones, the Switchplate blocks. Here are the twelve I finished.
These will finish at 3x5”, and with these twelve I now have a plan to sew a total of 117 for a 13x9 layout that will measure 39x45”. A small child’s quilt. My total so far for the year is 48 sewn. I should hit the halfway mark next month, a good pace.
There was no string sewing for me this past week (See? I told you the world was going nuts!). But in cleaning out my sewing room, I unearthed a bag of 3.5” half-square triangles (HST’s) given to me by my friend Sandy, who is President of the Salt Lake Quilts for Kids chapter, about a year or so ago. I decided to sew them up and donate it back to QFK as a top. I matched the HST’s up into sets of four to make a square-in-a-square block. There are enough HST’s to make 72 blocks at 6.5” each, unfinished size. I managed to get 36 of them sewn, so I’m halfway there. What I’m doing is alternating the prints and solid fabrics in the blocks. The solid is a shot cotton of blue and red threads that make a purple. I have always strongly disliked shot fabrics - I avoided shot silks altogether when I was a crazy-quilter - but this time we’re getting along OK. Here are the blocks so far:
I’ll donate this back to QFK as a top, not a finished quilt. I want these off my plate and I have no appropriate fabric for a backing. I have to say, though, that I have enjoyed the repetition of sewing these; very Zen-like (along with the music of Dan Fogelberg in the background) as I zone out of the world issues and zone into my sewing. The finished top, which I hope to complete this week in time for our QFK workshop on the 12th, will measure about 48x54”.
That’s all I have for this week, friends! I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday, where I’m going to go check out what red blocks the other scrappers have sewn up. Also sharing at Sew Preeti Quilts this week for TGIFF - Thank Goodness it’s Finished Friday! Have a good week!
