Weekly update: sunshine, music, scraps + reading

 Just two walks last week -- Sand Pond (close to home at Illinois Beach State Park) and Greenbelt (on the border of Waukegan and North Chicago).   

On many days Stevens will declare right after lunch that he's ready to go out.   A good habit for both of us.  

Yesterday's baby shower (for which I made the quilt I showed last Wednesday) was cancelled.  The mother-to-be was having false labor.  (No baby yet, though.)    It was a good thing I hadn't given away our tickets to the LCCCA performance.   The Suits were great!  

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In the studio:  the I Spy baby quilt generated a pile of cut-away triangles, all yellow-and-novelty. I sewed and trimmed them into 1.5" HSTs and then made 4.5" star blocks.   Earlier this year I did the same thing with left overs from another I Spy quilt. I was able to get 33 little stars between the two quilts.

I'll let them marinate for a while.

More 1.5" HSTs were sitting in a box.  I thought about making them into ocean waves blocks (inspired by Ann/Fret Not Yourself) but the alternate snowball blocks were fiddly with such small pieces.  I made twosies into foursies into 16-patches.  The green-with-white setting fabric was a fairly recent acquisition and I had just enough of it.  (I cut setting triangles oversized to provide a good "float.")  I'm pretty sure I'll use the blue floral (selvedge date 2012) for the borders.  Blocks are 4-1/2" unfinished.  

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I've haven't attended the Zoom P.E.O. Book Club for a couple of months due to schedule conflicts (and once, I confess, because I didn't want to reread the book).  

 I'm all set for tomorrow's discussion when historian Katherine Sharp Landdeck will join us to talk about her book.   She makes history come to life with the personal recollections by these pioneering women aviators.  

Linking up with  Design Wall Monday Oh Scrap!   Sew and Tell

P.S.  I made a quilt block to decorate a plain shopping bag for the baby quilt.  I fused the block to the bag with ultra-hold Heat'n'Bond.

Weekly update: Rainbow Geese, stash report, OMG, and reading

 

Each day brings about two more minutes of daylight. Sunrise was at 6:30 Saturday. I turned around to start for home and got a photograph of the just-beyond full moon in the western sky.The temperature got to 50!  The bulbs are beginning to poke above the soil.  (Granted, these particular bulbs were on the sunny south side.)

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Thanks again for your guesses and suggestions for the Rainbow Geese. I chose to set them in columns to emphasize each color.  

I liked these vintage prints so much that I didn't want to use them!  I told myself firmly that it was high time they got sewn into something. 

Back and binding used 3 yards.  (I counted the HSTs used for the geese when I made them for the Rainbow Scrap /Challenge last year.)

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Stash report, February:

Fabric in:  ZERO

Fabric out: 41-7/8 yards

Year-to-date:

Fabric in:  58 yards, cost nothing (a gift)

Fabric out:  103-1/4 yards

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(c) Edyta Sitar

It's time to declare my One Monthly Goal for March:   I will make elephants for F and J.  They are ALA colleagues who have collected elephants for years.  When I posted The Daily Brooch series on Facebook F took the cue and began a daily post of the elephant collection.  Hers went on longer than my brooches.  All kinds of metal, ceramic, wood, alabaster, jade.....but I noted that there was not a quilt among them.  An online search for elephant quilt patterns yielded many. I like Edyta Sitar's  best and bought the digital download.  

I don't know if I will make a whole quilt, though.   A set of placemats would be more practical. 

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This week's books:

Owls of the Eastern Ice

 Blakiston's Fish Owl is the largest owl in the world. Its habitat is far eastern Russia and northern Japan where it nests in dead old-growth trees and catches salmon in cold, free-running rivers. Logging, in particular, is destroying its habitat. Ornithologist Slaght spent a decade researching these magnificent, endangered birds. The book chronicles the challenges of his field research. The birds are scarce and elusive and maintain large territories. He had to contend with the climate (severe, snowy winters; wet springs; mosquitoey summers), the logistics (travel from his home in Minneapolis to eastern Russia), the language (he now is fluent in Russian). His patience and perseverance are rewarded.

 

Snow

A priest is murdered and mutilated in an Irish country house the week before Christmas, 1957.  Inspector St. John Strafford is sent to investigate. He discovers a household of assorted characters, any one of who might have committed the crime.   I figured out why the priest was killed but not who did it   It wasn't clear why the priest did not have a parish. And it was the Christmas season, but there wasn't any mention of holiday preparations / decorations / revelry.  I'm not as keen on this moody mystery as other readers are. 

Linking up with Oh Scrap  ,  Monday Making,  Design Wall Monday, and  One Monthly Goal

Midweek: playing with triangles

 The latest WITB ("what's in the box?") project uses the 4.5" unf HSTs I made for last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  

Can you guess which of these four layouts I chose?  (I have assembled the flimsy and I'm auditioning backings today.)  I'll tell you the answer in my post on Friday.  

Linking up on Midweek Makers

Midweek: Triangle Endeavo(u)r

On Sunday evening we watched Endeavour on PBS Masterpiece.*  I was considering fabric for the back of the HST geese quilt. 

When I pulled this off the shelf I knew I had to use it.








And here is Triangle Endeavour, finished!

I could have chosen any colorway for the back but the brown/orange Wamsutta print -- the big piece on the right -- is one I've wanted to use up for a long time.   I think I got the orange Endeavour just last year.  The floral at the bottom was part of a stash reduction. (I've been the fortunate recipient of a couple of those, including last week.) 

With hundreds of different prints in these HSTs, how did I manage to get two of the same right next to each other?


Linking up with Midweek Makers


*  My dad really enjoyed the original Inspector Morse series starring John Thaw.  I think of him when I watch this "prequel" series.