Busy and Cold Sunday

I woke up this morning and after a hot shower had a good breakfast and a couple cups of delicious French press coffee. Then Rico, Bender and I went for a brisk four mile walk and had a long conversation with my sister in Wisconsin the entire time.

Got home and got a big pot of soup on the stove. It was nice to get warmed up… a really good day to stay in the house.

Yesterday I roasted some butternut squash with onions, celery and carrots, and simmered it all today in some chicken broth and added some lovely herbs and warm spices. In a separate pan I simmered some potatoes, mushrooms and corn in stock. I pureed the butternut squash mix, then added in the contents of the other pot. It made a really tasty and comforting pot of soup. I gave a generous container to a friend and have enough for four meals for myself during this week.

After having some soup for lunch and then cleaning up the kitchen and getting the dishwasher loaded and running I put up some white twinkle lights on my back fence right off my patio. I love having lights in the back where I can see them as they make me feel better with all the darkness this time of year.

After another phone conversation with a friend I dug into some sewing and made two more sets of blocks for my impulse quilt.

I just love the effect of this swirly yellow fabric!

So I have the blocks out of three fabric sets done.

I quickly figured out a way to chain piece all these strips and it’s making these blocks go much faster. Each set gets a little easier than the previous set.

The trickiest part is trimming the two main block pieces prior to sewing them together. The yellow set all turned out really tight with very little extra fabric to trim away, so they took some time to get right. But rather than trimming the two pieces to the exact size and then sewing them together, I’m preferring to sew them together prior to precise trimming, and then trim the entire block to 10.5 inches. I just haven’t memorized the best way to do this, but I will before I’m done.

My 10.5 inch ruler arrived today. In fact, they delivered TWO of them to me about an hour apart. I checked my orders on Amazon to make sure I hadn’t accidentally ordered two and I hadn’t. The 10.5 inch ruler made it so much easier to trim these blocks. I’m glad I ordered it before I was too far into this project.

Here’s a basic idea of how I cut my pieces out of my 1/3 yard pieces of batik.

I cut the piece into two pieces that are about 11 inches tall. These pieces each measure about 11×12, depending on how generous of a cut I got when I purchased the fabric. There is one local fabric store where they are notoriously skimpy in cutting yardage. I’m often lucky to get a full 12 inches, but never get even a quarter inch to square up my fabric. I have choice words for that store every time I recognize a cut from them in my stash.

Then I stack these two pieces and rotate them to the right, so the 12 inch side is at the top. Then I cut off 4 inches on one side. This small piece will be the wedges for the shorter section, and the larger section will be cut into the longer wedges.

Here’s how these pieces are cut.

To cut the wedges I line my ruler up with the two inch mark at the top of the fabric and the 1.5 inch mark at the bottom, and then cut this line. Then switch to 2 inches at the bottom and 1.5 at the top to cut the next wedge. Then I just alternate across the fabric. The small strip at the end will probably go into my scrap bag.

I got the fabric for four more sets of blocks cut before I called it quits tonight. I’ll get the final three sets cut tomorrow night and will probably get at least one set sewn.

I was so excited to get this delivery today! All the girls at sheep herding are going to be very envious of my sexy boots!