Leftover Black and Whites, Rain, and a Bum Knee

We are in the midst of another atmospheric river in northwest Oregon. I’ve gotten a couple inches of rain so far this week and will likely get a couple more by the time it moves out early Saturday morning. We’re all stuck in the house and I haven’t played pickleball for nearly two weeks, and probably not for at least another week.

About 10 days ago I was feeding sheep at a sheep herding coop that I bought into, and I got my right foot tangled up in bailing twine and went down HARD and slammed my left knee into the concrete. My knee is much better than it was, but it’s still not ready for pickleball or for walking dogs.

I’m trying to keep dogs entertained in the house. And I’m trying to keep ME entertained in the house.

So I’ve been doing some sewing over the last couple weeks.

The new project I’ve been working on is made from leftovers of my black/white/pink Interweave quilt. I decided to use those black and white fabrics, add a few from my stash, and play around a little. Initially I thought I would make another Algorithm quilt so started off in that direction.

The colored fabric on the right is a piece of Kaffe fabric I bought online and I ordered the wrong color way. It seemed perfect for this project and I had enough of it.

So I cut the black and whites into 10 inch squares, cut them in half and added in the colored strips. As I made blocks I threw them up on the design wall and liked what I saw and started thinking…

What if, rather than continuing down the Algorithm path, I just leave these blocks as they are and play with the arrangement.

I drew out some design ideas on graph paper and realized that I was limited by geometry in my layout options.

There’s no way to make the lines not intersect in odd ways if I added more than one diamond pattern. So one diamond pattern it is!

I had originally planned to make this quilt top 8 x 10 blocks, but the blocks will finish at 9.5 inches so it would have been a bit big. So I chose to go with 7×8 blocks. That means I have 24 blocks left over. I might save them to use in a backing, might make a bold baby quilt or might cut them up to make bags.

Some eye candy.

I’ve always wanted to make a black and white quilt. And now I’ve made two! I do still have a lot of black and white fabrics in my stash so I’m hoping for more ideas to come.

I also made four quilt backs last week.

The fourth backing is for the quilt that has been unfinished for far too long… the yellow/brown/purple Japanese X and + quilt for my guest room. I’m pretty sure I started this quilt in November of 2020!

This quilt is big, so the backing is essentially three full widths of fabric sewn in horizontal strips. Nothing fancy. Three different fabrics combined. I forced myself to get it done and deliver it to my long armer.

That photo doesn’t show much. I’ll take better photos once it’s back from my long arm quilter.

I had two sets of visitors last week, both from my old home of Salt Lake City. I went to lunch with the first set. The second visitor arrived that afternoon. I met her at the light rail station. We went to dinner that night and I drove her up the Columbia River Gorge the next day to her friend’s place. She was flying out to Africa a couple days later. She promises to bring me some bold African prints on her return.

The trip up the gorge was a great day trip. We stopped at Cascade Locks to have fish tacos that a friend had recommended. They were soooo good!

We also had a nice walk on a small island in the Columbia.

That’s the Bridge of the Gods in the background.

Rico has really been warming up to Bruno! They have been playing a lot and he seems to be a lot less irritated with the puppy. I was in my sewing room the other night when it seemed terribly quiet. I found this in the living room.

Bruno is getting so big! I weighed him at around 21 lbs the other day.

Here he is the other day, compared to the day I got him!

I was looking for some paperwork in my guest room this morning when Bruno discovered the mirror in the dresser.

His little howl just kills me!

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