Stitches and Snow

It was a great week for quilting. Common Threads met at Janet's, and we had a variety of projects.

Ellen is working on the second block for her Home Sweet Home quilt. She isn't sure if she'll make all of the blocks or not, but she has a great start. (Her grandson said that the windows were crooked. I think this feature gives it charm, and that she should have told him it was on purpose.) It's the same pattern I used for the quilt over my mantle, completed in 2007, although I used a braided border, instead of the swags in the pattern:

Ginny was hand-quilting one of the King-sized pillow shams to go with a quilt she made a couple of years ago.

Janet was finishing up this quilt she started some time ago. It's one of the patterns from the Jelly Roll Quilts book.

She has vowed to make every quilt in the book. I have made several of the quilts in this book, too.

Margareth has been working on this cross-stitch:

Lynda had finished this beaded cowl and was working on another. (She modeled it while wearing a sweater she made 30 years ago):

The pattern for the cowl is "Ice Queen", found on Knitty.

Bernadette had finished this crocheted Daisy baby blanket:

I took the bunny litter along, and we took a group shot of all the Little Cotton Rabbits projects together, with Janet's elephant and Julie's elephant and fox. Julie is making the mouse now.

Our first real winter storm hit Saturday, and by Sunday morning it looked like this:

I had to take the photo during a brief moment when the sun was out, so you could see the berm. We had about 8" on the rail at this time, and more was coming down. This kind of "dump" isn't unusual, but it's very early to be getting this much snow at our 7200' elevation. However, Julie braved the beginnings of it on Saturday to bring me my "Reflections of Butterflies in Lemonade" quilt, which she quilted for me on her long-arm machine.

You may remember that this was a "disappearing hourglass" quilt, where you make a big hourglass block, cut it up and sew it back together after rotating the block segments. The instructions in The Missouri Star "Block" magazine called for starting with a layer cake (10" squares). I wanted to use some fat eighths, which are not 10", so I just calculated what I would need to get the size block needed to be the same as the instructions. I must have made a mistake in my calculations, however, because instead of having stars in my blocks, I had these floating things that looked like butterflies. Later, I watched the YouTube video, and figured out why this happened. In the magazine, Jenny Doan has you measure from the center seam and cut, then measure from that cut and cut again. In the video, she says to cut into nine equal squares. My hourglass blocks must have been slightly off. I'm happy with the effect, so nothing lost, but I learned something. At least all my "butterflies" are all floating the same distance from the seams. So I got lemonade. Appropriate, because the original design came from someone else's mistake. I'm sewing down the binding now. Then have to make a label. 

Since Thanksgiving is this week in the US, I thought my readers would appreciate this turkey:

I'm cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. We're having company, so I will have to do the "H-word," too. Happy Thanksgiving, US readers, and everyone have a happy week!

What's on my needles: The Johan socks and Mr. F's clothes. Still hand-quilting my Spring Flowers quilt, finished two of four appliqué blocks. Sewing the binding on my "Reflections" quilt

What's on my Featherweight: Silently waiting for the next sewing project.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished The Line by J. Horn from Audible, interesting book about witches in Savannah. Then I listened to Audible's Young Mrs. Savage by D. E. Stevenson, one of my favorite authors. She allows you to visit England and/or Scotland in an earlier time. Her characters are very real. Still reading Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel, from Book Bub.

What's my app of the week: KSL Weather Vortex. It's put out by a Salt Lake City TV station, but can be used anywhere. It's how I knew I wasn't going to risk going to church Sunday morning.

What's in my wine glass: Lindeman's Shiraz-Cabernet 2013. Very nice. The wine steward rarely selects a bad wine.

What's my tip of the week: When hand-quilting a quilt using a hoop, I like to keep the tension-adjusting screw to the left as much of the time as possible, to keep it out of the way of my quilting thread. For straight lines, I use masking tape, if I don't have a seam to follow. You can get tape in various widths to correspond to the space between quilting lines.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals were harmed during the production of this blog post.