One Big Square and Four Little Ones

Quilters are amazing.  And no, I'm not referring to myself, but rather those quilters who come up with innovative ways to create blocks.  

I'm working on a patriotic wall hanging for our living room.  I bought a book by Carrie Nelson called Schnibbles Times Two which uses pre-cut fabric pieces to create quilts in two sizes.  In other words, each quilt in the book may be made in two different sizes:  a large one using 10" pre-cut squares called layer cakes and a smaller one using 5" squares called charms.  I'm using charm squares and making a smaller one.

The pattern is called Plan C and I'm using charms from the Old Glory Gatherings collection by Primitive Gatherings for Moda. I bought two sets when I was in Coeur d'Alene with Dan last fall with this quilt and purpose in mind.

The palette is limited--red, blue, cream and tan, so it won't be as colorful as the quilt in the book, but I think I'll be okay.  

So, what's up with my first comment about innovative quilters?  Well, when I started to make the blocks, I was referred to a section in the front of the book with instructions on making the first pieces of the star blocks. I've made plenty of star blocks over the years, but I'd never had instructions like these although I confess I had seen similar ones somewhere.  (I read quilt books and magazines for leisure reading.)  I don't know if Carrie Nelson came up with this process, but whoever did...  I just wish my mind was as clever!  So, here are some photos as I worked the process.

First a big square (the background fabric) and four small ones:

Using a ruler and a pencil, you're told to draw a diagonal line on the back side of each of the small squares and then lay two of them on the larger one in the following manner:

And then stitch 1/4" on each side of the line:

Then you cut down the drawn lines:

And press open:

Then you take the other two small squares and lay them on like this:

And again stitch 1/4 inch from both sides of the line:

Slice again:

Iron open, and voila! I now have stacks of these units which are called "Flying Geese".

Normally they are made with a large triangle and two smaller ones, one unit at a time.  But this method makes all four of the units needed for each star with one large square and four smaller ones.  Now I ask you:  Is the ingenious or what?  It's what I've suspected for a long time:  there's a whole lot of math and engineering that goes into making quilts.  

Note to Bernina owners:  I used my 37 patchwork foot, and the instructions said to stitch a "scant 1/4" seam".   When I piece (I was using my 330), I use the straight stitch plate and I wondered:  could I scootch my needle over one click to left (I was stitching on the right side of the drawn line each time) in order to create the scant seam? I carefully checked without fabric under the needle and yes indeed, the needle just cleared the hole in the plate.  Perfect scant seam.  

Projects

Hoo boy.  Somehow this month is just racing by and my blogging is taking a hit.  I mentioned that I had finally come out of my sewing slump and created two projects for embroidery club.  Here's the first one which we'll do in May.  

The embroidered words are from an OESD Design Studio pack called Liberty.  I enlarged it quite a bit so it would fill the background area.  I did the blue one first and then, because I love Osnaburg, did the red one.  I used stitch #4 on my Bernina (I think it's that number on all Berninas) to do the wavy quilting stitch down each stripe. I really like this project and think that it could be fun to do for different seasons with other designs in the background square.  I love projects like this!

Meanwhile, I've cleaned up all the flat areas in my sewing room and I think I'm about ready to make a patriotic wall hanging to go over the sofa table in the living room for the summer.  It's a Schnibbles pattern from Schnibbles Times Two by Carrie Nelson.  It has many small pieces so I'd best be starting on it so I'll be ready by Memorial Day.  

Catching Up

Ahem, it's just a few days later, right?  {Smile}.  Time just keeps flying by.  Anyway, here are a few pictures of the work Dan did outside my sewing room.  (I didn't think to take a "before" photo, but just picture a badly overgrown shrub...)

The debris from said badly overgrown shrub:

Hooking on the cable to pull the roots:

Ta Da!

Over the next few days, Dan pulled all the ground cover and the whole area is now bare.  Except for the snow flakes that fell today.  Um hum, snow.  But it didn't stay, so we're okay.  

Since it was a cold, snowy day, we had a yummy supper of pork loin, potatoes and carrots.  I used my wonderful Pampered Chef covered baker this time and everything was dee-licious.  The pork was so moist and tender. When I set it on the table, I decided it was all so beautiful it deserved a commemorative photo:

Meanwhile, my sewing muse, which had vanished for many weeks, came back this last week and I had fun in my sewing room creating several projects for future embroidery clubs at the shop.  Yay!!  And today I spent hours sorting through piles on my tables and then playing with my machines, trying different features and experimenting with presser feet and stitches.  I had fun!  

Now I'm heading for bed with a stack of sewing magazines looking for more inspiration.  ♥

We're Here!

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous here for the last four days and we've been working about the place.  I even have scratches on my arms and hands to prove I've been pruning roses!  Dan loves being out of doors, but me, not so much.  Except in weather like this.  Seventy degrees, sunny, and perfect.

I'll be back soon with a better post.  Happy spring!

Progress

Yes, there has been progress made on the scrap quilt.  I have five of the rows joined together and I even have a plan for the borders!

Here's a quick picture I took tonight:

And on the knitting front, I finally worked in all the yarn ends on the dishclothes I've been knitting!  Then as I played with them I had fun taking pictures of my finished products.

Wild and crazy knitted art!  :-)  And now I'm off to bed. It's late and I'm working at the shop tomorrow due to conflicting schedules in my week.  Happy Tuesday!  

More This 'n That

It's definitely March outside!  We've had snow, wind, rain, and generally March-like weather this past week.  Even Buddy the Cat doesn't want to go outside although he tries every now and then.  Dan is off doing a workshop today and I'm being very lazy although I did strip the bed and the sheets are chugging around in the washer as I type.  

Saturday night we had a fun evening the Ann, Eric and the boys.  They'd been working outside in their yard and so we decided it would be a good evening to invite them over for some Papa Murphy's pizza.  We enjoyed the pizza (and salad), and then settled in to visit.  The boys had fun getting out all manner of toys including a full size (for a small person) Lincoln Log set Dan made when the bigger boys were small.  I managed to get this picture of Daniel peering out the window from the inside.

Meanwhile in the quilt department, I finished all the blocks on the scrap quilt and put them together in rows with one-inch sashing. After pondering for a while, I decided I'd go ahead and put in the cornstones so I did so, joining the first two rows.  Then I stood back and looked and was amazed to see I'd lost my original blocks and created a whole new pattern.  And I didn't think I liked it.

If you look at the top two rows, you'll see that the cornerstones made a center for a whole new pinwheel.  It makes me feel dizzy to look at it (at least in the "real"--I don't know if you can tell in the photo).  Ack!!  So I cut some long strips to put between the next rows to see what it would look like without the cornstones and the original blocks are easy to see.  Now I need to take the top rows apart.  (I love how some people call it frog stitching--rip-it, rip-it!)  

So, dear readers, you know what I'll be up to later today or perhaps tomorrow.  Meanwhile, stay warm and cozy!

Water, Three Hours, and A Couple Thousand Dollars

It was just a week ago today that I wrote my post on showers and water.   On Friday morning I got up, went to our bathroom, turned on the water and...no water!!  I walked out to the living room and said to Dan, "We have no water!"  He checked and of course, I was right.  He went downstairs and began checking:  the pressure tank, the well, the room where we have the water softener, et al.  Meanwhile, I was wandering around upstairs, in my nightgown, saying, "I have to go to work today!"  

Back he came and said he thought he could do some kind of quick fix that would last long enough to get me to work.  He did, and I stuck my head in the kitchen sink and washed my hair with cold water (not wanting to let the water run long enough to get hot), all the time thinking of Mma Grace Makutsi.  At least I was indoors.  

It turned out that our lovely water had eaten though a section of a fitting on the rust removal tank and clogged the hose leaving us with--no water.  Dan stopped by the shop later that morning to tell me he'd fixed the problem. Yay!!

Fast forward to this Monday morning.  Dan told me he'd heard the pump on the well going on and off all night long.  Not a good thing.  He suspected we had a leak somewhere.  He checked all over downstairs and looked at the lawn between the house and the well.  The first year we lived here, we had a leak in the connecting pipe on this very same week of March and he'd had to dig it up and replace it.  He found no water saturated ground, so we decided to wait and see.  

Last night even I was awakened by the pump cutting off and on.  This morning Dan took the top off the well, and as he said, he could hear water "hissing like a snake."  He called a pump service in a nearby town and they said they could be out in an hour.  We decided that if we had to go to all the work of replacing the pipe in the well, we'd just as well replace the pump.  We'd had to replace the pump in 2001 after it quit one weekend when we had company. (We were so thankful our neighbor allowed us to run a hose from an outdoor faucet to our pressure tank so we could at least flush the toilets!)  This pump was now twelve years old, and we had no guarantee on how much longer it would last.  

Fortunately we have big gates into our back yard, so the truck with the hydraulic boom was able to back right up to the well.  Here Dan and the pump man contemplate the situation.  

Up goes the boom and down goes the hook to start pulling up the pipe.  Our well is 250 feet deep.

Hooking onto the first piece of pipe:

Finally, on the tenth length of pipe the leak was discovered.  They knew it was this one because the previous nine lengths were dry--the water was leaking out below them, and this one was 3/4 full.

We gave up on iron pipe and went to plastic.  Our water has a bacteria in it that eats iron, so hopefully the  plastic will last a lot longer.  Who ever would think plastic would work better than iron?  The arrow in the picture below points to the new pump getting ready to be attached to the first piece of pipe.  On the ground the man is attaching stainless steel connectors to each piece of plastic pipe.  

And now, three hours and a couple thousand dollars later, here's our yard, looking just like it did before.

And we're thankful.