a week already?

I'm trying to blog every Monday to keep myself on a schedule and keep things from getting away from me.  Some weeks seem longer than others.  This one seems to have gone by quickly!

So what have I done?

First, we'll talk about quilty-wise.

When I left you last, I had started making blocks from kit leftovers.  I got ten blocks from what was left:

Darn it, Gabby.

Really?

Okay.  Finally managed to get one without help.

But ten is an odd number for any setting, so I had to think a bit.  Did I want to make some alternate blocks?  I still had some rectangular chunks, but wasn't sure if that was the direction I wanted to go.  Should I remove one and send it to the orphan blocks pile?

Decisions, decisions.

I decided to send one block to the orphanage.  It was my least favorite and I felt it played least well with the others.  (Though the one that blends with the sashing was also a candidate.)

I had some skinny strips of the purple print that became sashing and also found some black dot (you can't really see the dot) stuck in with the leftovers that I was lucky to still have a small chunk of in my stash.  So borders and sashing went happily.

But it is still about 30x30", which is quite small, even for a baby quilt.

And I still have that stack of rectangles.

Math!

I figured out how many it would take of these rectangles for each side, but when I started laying them out, it didn't look right.  It looked way too long on one side and way too short on another.  (How is that possible?!)  So I winged it.  I sewed every single one together (after carefully picking them up in order so the colors were well-distributed) and then measured and cut the borders from that long strip.  I had a few skinny pieces from the block strips just in case, but I didn't need them.  I literally had a half-inch too much for the border.  No one can feel guilty about throwing that scrap away!

I used the black again as cornerstones (I knew it was going to be tight, so made that decision ahead) and that border went much faster than anticipated.  Before I knew it, I had a top!

It measures 36x36" and will be donated at some point.  It is not yet quilted, but I cut strips of black for binding, so that is ready to go and one less thing I can procrastinate with.

With that done, I had nothing pressing, so I decided to dig into the box of squares I cut at my mom's a while back.

I swear to you, I had not seen her in HOURS.  I hardly got the last of this set of nine on the floor and she came tearing in and flopped.  It took a minute to get a good photo of her, but she was winking at me.  She is such a silly kitten.

And then I started another set of nine (the fabric square sets were stacked and nine was the lucky number)...

Apparently these are hers, too.

Another set of nine is in the works, but are not yet finished.  Stuff needed to happen and I was at a good stopping point, so they are awaiting my return.

But yesterday, a new project was decided.  I was chatting with Colette and I mentioned this quilt having caught my eye and it has held my attention for a while.  She liked it, too.  So...we'll be making this quilt together-apart in the coming months.  I plan to get started cutting this afternoon!  (I realized, in my digging through the stash for sashing for the Nova Star quilt that I have a LOT of grey-black fabrics and this will be a perfect way to reduce that stash!)

In other news, the hubby and I both had the weekend off, so we went to a park not far from home and wandered the trails in the woods.  This is the only photo I took...

The trees have turned a lot even just in the few days since we were there, but this was still a pretty scene.  There was a guy fly fishing, standing in the river in waders, just to the left of the photo.  The forest was fairly empty of people and very quiet.  There was a stream running all sorts of directions through the trails and it was nice to just go do something!

Yesterday I finally broke down and bought new curtains for my living room.  I took the old ones down this summer and washed them during my maniacal cleaning this summer, but never got them back up.  Being summer and our bedrooms being upstairs...and the curtains of the decorative, not privacy, variety...I wasn't in a big hurry to get them back up.  But I decided to replace them with some that provide a bit more privacy and hopefully, this winter, will also help keep the large room a little less drafty!

I baked some this week, too.  I made pumpkin-cream cheese "muffins" that were okay, but not noteable enough to share the recipe.  I took the majority of them to work (it made two dozen!) and they went fast, but I think free food is a big draw, even if it's not particularly great.

And finally, a bit of bad news.  My brother-in-law was admitted to the hospital yesterday.  He has really bad pneumonia.  He has tested negative for covid, but is exhibiting a lot of symptoms.  And I know, because I'm a nerd who listens to sciencey podcasts, that sometimes the test can be wrong.  And sometimes everything looks like covid to everyone and the person still tests negative.  He will likely be transported from the small hospital here in my town (he lives about 20 minutes away) to a much bigger hospital a bit north of us, but that means his level of care will improve.  But we are all worried, so any good thoughts you'd like to send his way would be much appreciated.

And with that, the hubby has just pulled brats off the grill, so it is time to go pig out!

Happy quilting!

Katie

PS The hubby and I have not had any contact with the brother-in-law, or any of his family in fact, for two weeks or more.  Even the outside cookout that they held a week (or was it two?) ago.  We knew there had been a bug hitting his sister's family and were wary and stayed away.  It seems that may have been passed to her brother, or perhaps he acquired something on his own.  But with the hubby and I both being essential workers and having employers on high alert to ANY illness, we opted to stay home from the cookout, even if the kids who had been sick earlier in the week seemed to be doing better by then.  As hard as it is to stay away from family, right now I am glad we acted hard-hearted and stayed home that night or we might be home, isolating and waiting and worrying even more than we already are, right now.