I've got to wear shades...

I was working/procrastinating on the Hands2Help quilt a couple weeks ago when I got sidetracked by a baggie full of something good.  Not that kind of baggie full, something totally legal in all 50 states.  Quite possibly as capable of inducing a chill state of mind, but without the paranoia.  Not even of the quilt police.

My friend and fellow quilter Marei and I swapped boxes of scrap fabric a while ago, but to call what she sent me a box of scrap fabric is an understatement.  It was a treasure chest!

Among the rolls of strips all neatly cut to usable sizes were a couple of baggies with notes inside, to the effect of "Have fun!" and "Maybe you can create something with these."

Happily, I did!  I made THIS wall hanging from one bag of bitty-bits.

Recently I rediscovered the other bagful—two-inch "bonus" half-square triangles: the corners you cut off some other project and, if you're like Marei and me, and maybe you, you set aside to use some other time. 

I started pulling the pieces out and arranging them in groups of 16.  They were so cute and colorful!  So I sewed those groups of 16 together into 6.5-inch blocks, as many as I could make.

Now what? 

Well, I could sash them or border them, I thought.  What might I have in the stash for that?  Here's a pretty bundle of fat quarters I won in last year's Hands2Help giveaway.  Let's just open these up a bit and see if any of them might do, color-wise.  

Yes, all of them!  Okay, maybe not the ivory one, but all the rest.

Hm, what if I stagger or offset them?  Then I would only need to border three sides instead of four, and isn't that interesting?

Let's make the two side borders a bit narrower and the longer border wider.  If I cut the side borders 6.5 x 3 and the longer border 11.5 x 3.5, that will make the block finish at 9 x 11 inches.  Seems like a workable size rectangle to make a baby quilt or wall hanging.

And that is the story of how friendship, farting around, and flimsies come together.

It is bright, and I like that.  In real life, it's not quite as eye-searingly bright.  I tried to correct somewhat for the dim light of the basement with so-so results.

Now I'm in the process of making a scrappy back.

How have you used your small bonus half-square triangles?  Do you have some lying around, waiting for inspiration?  Do you toss them or give them away? 

Quilt for International Institute

This year's Hands2Help charity quilt challenge is coming to a close, and I'm nipping in under the wire with a quilt I've just finished today.

Somewhere in the beginning of the challenge, Sarah posted a photo of a quilt which caught my eye and served as inspiration.  It seemed like a good way to use all those bright, larger scale prints in the stash and scrap boxes.  I took a good rummage around and came up with a variety, stocked up on some Kona Snow background fabric that happened to be on sale, and was off to the races.

The tortoise kind of race, that is.  Slow and steady...

I cut 9-inch squares and made half-square triangles with a bright and a background square.  Then trimmed them to 8.5 inches and arranged them on the design wall.  Pretty easy-peasy.  It finished at 64 x 88.

The backing was made with chunks of scraps and some yardage from the stash.  I thought WAY harder about how to piece the backing than I did the front, though you might not know it to look at it now.  Like a jigsaw puzzle, putting together this and that to bring it up to the right size using the odd parts available.  I miscalculated somewhat when one of those odd parts ran short, which led to making the two hourglass blocks in the middle.

That may be my favorite part of the whole back.

Anyway, it's done and ready to send off to International Institute!

Linking to Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

What's Not Working

I spent the last three nights glued to PBS from 8 to 10 p.m., watching the American Experience series on World War I.  It was a very good program.  "Good" from a historical perspective, and I learned a lot.  I didn't know much about the Great War, other than the few paragraphs I recalled from History class all those years ago (and maybe Downton Abbey).  This series painted a broader picture of what was going on at home and abroad during those years, and that was very enlightening.

Old oak along the walking trail.

Striking that there's been 100 years between then and now, yet some of the same or similar issues persist.

An ancestor (center) during WWI.

My overall takeaway:  We human beings can most certainly be good to each other, espouse lofty goals, try to behave morally, get along and work toward a greater good—and at the same time we are capable of doing awful, shitty, horrific, and terrible things to one another and our world.

I know.  Nothing new there.  We all know this.  We love and we hate.  We want peace and make war.  We rain down destruction in the name of our ideals, but in moments of truce, we celebrate and shake hands and share food and commonalities.

From an ancestor's personal photo collection - Local WWI Red Cross volunteers.

Things are not ever 100% black and white, right or wrong.  They are complex and nuanced and cast in varying shades of gray.  And we don't particularly like gray.  We prefer clarity, often to the point of inventing a vision of it and disregarding or quashing anything that would threaten to cloud it.

Can you see it?

What can we do?  Must history continue to repeat itself?  I don't have the answer.  But I think we strive do the best we can with what we have, what we know or can know, and then do better.  Be open to other perspectives, new information, old information if we didn't comprehend it the first (or 100th) time around.  Get out of the trenches of our biases, groupthink, self-interests, and us-versus-them mentality, and cultivate compassion and greater understanding.

This pair has been checking out the yard - male wood duck and female mallard.

   * * * * * 

Well, how to segue to sewing from there?

I put the Solstice Challenge Quilt-Along blocks on the design wall last week and was promptly underwhelmed.

Meh.  It's just not working for me.  But that's okay.  

I've decided not to worry about catching up on the rest of the blocks that I'm behind on, and will just put it away for now.  Later on I'll look at it again and maybe have a different perspective.  Perhaps parts of it will wind up in a donation quilt or two.

In the meantime, I've started to pull and cut fabric for this year's Hands2Help charity quilt.  Sarah posted some eye candy recently that tripped a light bulb for me, and I ran off to round up some bright graphic scraps.

I'm excited to get started on it!

Sunday Sundry 3-12-17

As Zep would say:  "It's been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time..."

Maybe not so lonely, in my case, but a long time between posts for sure.  Unfortunately for you, dear reader, I have no harrowing tale of being abducted by aliens to account for being MIA.  Just, you know, life.

On the subject of aliens, though, two things (Already with the tangents? Yes, indeed!):  (1)  This Saturday Night Live skit never fails to crack me up.  (2)  Arrival.  Good movie.

* * * * *
Here on the home front, I have finished a couple of kennel quilts from repurposed scrubs. 

First, a pretty basic one, alternating a solid and a print.  The back is also entirely from scrubs.

Next, a Gee's Bend-style housetop quilt.  The wine and cheese themed fabric on the back was a thrift store find.

I made a scrappy bias binding from scrubs, because I'd opted to maintain the wonky, slightly bowed nature of this free-pieced strippy quilt.  I deliberately did not square it up whatsoever.  Amazingly, it lies completely flat with no ripples, which is better than some of my squared up quilts.  Since the poly-cotton blend scrubs were washed and worn many times over, the quilt has a wonderful soft drape to it, and is cozy warm. 

It was hard to capture the true vibrancy of the solid colors in this quilt, but it is better looking in real life.  I like it so much, I may have to hang onto it a little while before it (literally) goes to the dogs.

* * * * *
It's March, and that means it's time to get in on some fun quilt making for the benefit of other people.  Sarah has just kicked off the 2017 Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge!

Click on over to Confessions of a Fabric Addict for all the details and to sign up.  I always enjoy participating in this annual event to make quilts for a number of good causes (or a local one of your choosing).  And, as always, there are great prizes!

* * * * *
How it went down yesterday on our trip to W@lmart:

That moment when you come up behind your spouse who's pushing the cart at the store and go to toss something in, but he doesn't know you're there and veers to the right, so the item lands on the floor, and the guy coming the opposite way looks up from his phone at just the right moment, like you might be a crazy person who randomly throws things on the floor in other people's paths. Meanwhile the spouse just keeps moving down the aisle. I hate when that happens.

* * * * *
My dad is happy to be back home and out of the rehab center after his ankle fracture and surgery.  He's still non-weightbearing on the left leg for several more weeks.  Here he is relaxing in his new lift chair.

The day he came home, we had a freak hailstorm.  It was as if Mother Nature decided to throw him a ticker-tape parade, complete with her own version of confetti.

Personally, I could have done without having to shovel pea and marble-sized hail off the wheelchair ramp so he could get in the house, but you do what you have to do.  I got it cleared off in the nick of time, just as my sister was driving in with him.

* * * * *
What with everything going on after the first of the year, it took a while for us to get around to downloading all of our Christmas pictures.  I thought this was a pretty nice one of my siblings and me (on right).

* * * * *
I changed up my Pyrex display in December.  Since snow is still in the forecast here, I don't feel bad that it's still up, although probably not much longer.

The tree out front has a great sap-sicle going on.  We had it trimmed recently when it was warmer (upper 40's), and then it got cold again. Seeing one of these on a river birch tree was a first for me.

Winter in the Upper Midwest:  It ain't over 'til it's over!

Sunday Sundry 2-12-17

I started another quilt on a whim this past week.  One minute I'm cutting up a laundry basket full of solid colored scrubs and the next I decide to just start sewing some of the strips together.

Since I had the scissors in hand, I thought I'd shoot for a free-pieced, Gee's Bend style "Housetop" quilt, using just my scissors and eyeballing it, no ruler, no rotary cutter, no pins.

A while later, I had this.  A little wonky and bowed in places, to be expected, but all in all, not bad!

Decided to make it more rectangular, and I had two good sized pieces from a pair of scrub pants that worked well for that.

I think it might be hard to part with this one as a kennel quilt.  I really like it!

* * * * *
My dad had surgery this past week to fix the multiple fractures in his ankle, foot and lower leg from falling on the ice.  Four hours, five plates, and forty-two screws later, it was done.  His surgeon said it was the worst break he had seen in his entire career.  Dad had some tremendous pain after surgery, as you can imagine, but it seems better controlled now.  Now we wait for the bones to mend and healing to take place while he stays off it for a few months.

* * * * *
I was pretty frustrated this past week with trying to maintain a low-FODMAP diet yet things still not sitting well.  I'd had a streak of good days and then it seemed that no matter what, things turned to crap. It's been a month of watching and journaling and limiting and testing, and yesterday I was having a "forget it" moment.  And by "forget it," I totally mean the other f-word.  

So I thought:  If eating right isn't working, try...drinking?

And boy, did it taste fantastic! 

Just one, though.  I'm a lightweight like that.

* * * * *
Of course, laughter is the best medicine.  I am binge-watching Schitt's Creek on Netflix and laughing out loud!  I am loving the entire cast, but Eugene Levy playing it straight is a complete hoot, and his real son, Dan Levy, plays his son on the series and is equally hilarious.

* * * * *
With Valentine's Day just around the corner, I gave in to my sweet tooth today and tried out a new (gluten-free, dairy-free, low-FODMAP) recipe.

Brownie bites with peppermint frosting.  Thumbs up!  This one's a keeper.  Oh, and Norm too.  ;)