Author: agilejack

I slept in until 10 am today. It felt really good. I needed it. And then I had pancakes for breakfast. It was a good way to start my day.

After breakfast, which finished a little later than breakfast should, I loaded the dogs in the car so they could have the illusion of an outing, and headed to my local quilt store to pick up three yards of fabric.

I already had a yard of this fabric for the sashing on the quilt I’ll make when my friend visits next month. But I decided to get enough to do all the sashing from the same bolt. I have had significant dye lot differences before and wanted to avoid that.

They had some new Australian Aboriginal fabrics but I didn’t buy any. I showed great self control. I figure my friend and I will go out there for some shopping while she’s here and I’ll go wild then.

When I got back from the fabric store I got myself and the dogs ready to go for a nice long walk. It wasn’t raining but it was still damp. Pretty typical for Portland this time of year. But the temperature was just a little over 60 degrees. It’s so odd when just a few days ago we were up to our butts in ice!

This is frog weather in Portland. They love warm and wet weather and on our walk they were singing their hearts out. You’ll want to turn the sound up for this video.

We saw a lot of fallen trees around the neighborhood. This one was so big!

It was actually up past my waist! It fell across the street and smashed a house. The woman who lives in the house was home at the time but wasn’t hurt. You can see the downed power lines to the left of that section of tree. The lines were on the ground all along that street. I assume the power company will come back later and clean that all up.

My boys were so happy to get out for a walk after being cooped up all day yesterday.

Look at those smiles! We actually walked just a little over three miles!

It’s so nice to have my foot feeling so good that I can walk that far. But I need to work on my average pace. I was down around 18 minutes per mile before my foot acted up. I’d like to get back to that in the next few months. It doesn’t help that I’m stopping and talking to people about fallen trees! That might be a big part of that slower pace!

When we got home I decided to spend some time in my sewing room before dinner. I counted my finished blocks, did some calculations and figured out how many more blocks I need to make to have 80 blocks for my blue quilt. Of course, I needed 48 more blocks. Then I dug in and cut all the centers I need, followed by the sashing strips and the sharks tooth triangles.

Heads up: I will be writing up a tutorial for these blocks once I have them all done. So keep an eye out for that.

Then it was time for dinner. I treated myself to some of my home made chili verde. It was very yummy and comforting.

After dinner I sat down at my machine and chain pieced all the sashing strips to those 48 center pieces. Followed by a good pressing.

That’s all 48 of them all stacked up.

I thought I might be done for the night. That was a lot of accomplishment for today. But I decided to put the corner triangles on ten of these pieces so I could even up the blocks on my design wall.

I need one more row for the width and four more rows for the height.

I have to say, that morning glory fabric is really something! Just little bright spots of sparkle.

Like sparking little fire works in a field of blue. I love them.

Here’s two fabrics that haven’t appeared in the blocks until tonight. The two in the center of this photo.

So, with the ten blocks I finished after dinner, I only have 38 to go. They will be really fast to finish because all I have to do is add the triangles and square them up. I wonder if I can get them done tomorrow. I really should spend a little time on my house tomorrow. But I wouldn’t be surprised if I actually do finish up the blocks for this quilt. If I do, this will be a fast damned finish!

I’m playing pickleball tomorrow afternoon. Since pickleball was canceled this morning because of rain, it will be good to get out and move around. First, I’m helping with teaching some kids how to play, then I’ll play with the club. I’m also playing Monday night.

My boys will be happy that the weather tomorrow will allow a nice walk. I hope to get up early enough to get us all out before pickleball.

I worked hard today and finally pulled myself away from my desk at about 6:30. Exhausted.

I really wanted to get the boys, and me, out for a nice walk tonight but it’s raining… just like it rained all day. So after dinner I hunkered down in my sewing room to chunk away on this new blue quilt.

I actually went back into my sewing room late last night after posting on my blog, which I rarely do. I finished eight more blocks, for a total of 16 blocks done.

Tonight I started with cutting the remaining blue fabrics I’m using for this quilt.

These are the four fabrics that haven’t appeared in blocks yet.

Once I had those fabrics cut I cut a bunch of the sharks tooth for the corner triangles.

I was extra careful to make sure that I lined up my squares with the right side of the fabric up and cut them with the correct diagonal direction.

I also cut a bunch of the sashing strips for the center pieces.

Then the next thing I decided to do was to fix the block that had corners that were cut incorrectly. I picked out the wrong triangles and sewed new triangles on.

Not my favorite thing to do, but I knew that I needed to get this taken care of or I’d end up making a new one and putting this one in the scrap bucket.

With that little annoyance out of the way I got into a groove and sewed up 16 more blocks, doubling the number of blocks I already had completed. Here’s all 16 blocks before they were squared up.

I thought I would stop there, but it was only 9 pm so I squared them up and tossed them up on the design wall.

I’m really loving how this is turning out. I love the blue fabrics and how you see little sparkles here and there. And the sharks tooth triangles are pretty fun! I’m really glad I went to the effort to figure that swirling effect out. It’s definitely worth the time and brain power I put into it.

This makes a total of 32 blocks done. I’m thinking this quilt will be 8 blocks wide and 10 blocks high. So I’ll need a total of 80 blocks. That puts me very close to half way done. It’s quite possible I’ll make some good headway on this over the weekend. It’s going to be a wet one so I’ll spend a good deal of it in my sewing room.

Here’s a little eye candy.

And one more just because I can.

I’m supposed to play pickleball in the morning but with the rainy forecast it’s looking doubtful. We might get a break in the weather in the afternoon that will allow us a walk tomorrow. That would make my boys very happy.

I have to run to my local quilt store tomorrow to pick up some fabric I need for the quilt I’ll make when my friend visits. Oh, and I made plans with my brother and SIL today for them to visit me next weekend. They are quite relieved they didn’t end up here during our ice storm and four day power outage. So I need to spend a little time getting my house ready.

Here’s to the weekend!

I’ve had a package of blue Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics in my closet for at least a year now. I had planned to make an all blue version of the Jewel Frames quilt. Here’s my very colorful Jewel Frames quilt.

The longer that packet of fabric sat in my closet, the less interested I became in making this quilt in a blue version.

But while I was working on my Fresh Start scrappy quilt I had an idea. What if I replicated that pattern but doing it in a less scrappy way, and what if I used those blue fabrics? I’ve been noodling over this idea for a few days and decided to dive in tonight.

So the first thing I did was dig into all those blue fabrics and selected the ones I wanted to use. I wanted prints that felt more light and airy as that’s the feeling I want this quilt to have. Here’s what I ended up with.

You can see that all the fabrics I selected are a lighter tone and they all have some white in the print. No deep and dark saturated blues in this group. This sort of gives it the airy feeling I want.

I wanted to make the blocks a little smaller than the 9.5 inch blocks in my Fresh Start quilt so I could easily make the quilt symmetrical while maintaining the generous throw size. So I pulled out my rulers to do some cyphering.

These three rulers allowed me to determine the size of the block, the size of the center strip and the size of the corner triangles.

With that all figured out I started pressing and cutting.

I had planned to use the royal blue Roman glass as the border on the Jewel Frames block with the blue and white sharks tooth as the wider sashing. For this block I’m using the roman glass as the strips along the center of the block and the sharks tooth for the corner triangles of each block.

Here’s the first completed block before and after being squared up.

It goes together in exactly the same way as my Fresh Start blocks. but everything is a little different in size. I cut the center strip from one piece of fabric rather than piecing it. And I cut it 4 inches wide rather than 3.5 inches wide. I cut the strips on either side at 1.5 inches and didn’t trim the strip before adding the triangle. And it worked well.

The triangles were a bit of a challenge. I wanted the squares where the four corners come together to be interesting and consistent from corner to corner. So it took a little bit of figuring out to get it right. Before I cut the squares on the diagonal I folded the fabric and laid the folded pieces out with the block centers to replicate the effect I wanted.

I wanted the sharks tooth to sort of spiral around where the corners come together. And I like this effect. I was happy to figure it out but it made my brain hurt a little.

I basically had to line up all the squares of the sharks tooth the exact same way and cut them all on the same diagonal. I took this photo so I could refer to it every time I cut these squares.

They will all be stacked and cut the same way to maintain that spiral. Sharks tooth points up. Diagonal cut from lower left to upper right.

Once I had that all figured out I dug in and made 8 blocks. They went together pretty quickly.

I’m really liking how this is looking. And it should just get more and more interesting with every additional fabric design I add. I really love the effect of that sharks tooth were those corner pieces come together.

But there is one rogue block that is just wrong. I’ve isolated the block in this photo. the sharks tooth in this block isn’t rotating in the same way as the rest of the intersections.

It must have rotated this block four or five times before I realized that it just wasn’t going to be right, no matter how many times I turned it. So now it was necessary to figure out what I had done wrong so I wouldn’t do it again.

It took a few minutes but I figured it out. When I cut the first set of blocks from the sharks tooth I turned them all right side up as I lined them up for cutting. With the second set I left half face up and half face down, just as they were stacked to cut. This basically means that for the fabrics that are right side down, the diagonal was cut in the wrong direction, changing the orientation of the print.

So half of these triangles are not usable and will go in my scrap bin and will probably end up in a bag or as crumb piecing. Luckily it wasn’t a ton of fabric and I will now have this mistake emblazoned on my brain. I won’t make this mistake again.

And, of course, a little eye candy.

We’ve had a couple of warm and wet days this week. There is water standing all over my yard and all over the streets. Warm and wet weather this time of year is perfect for frogs and they were really singing tonight! They didn’t make a peep last week when they were under ice!

Tomorrow is Friday. It will be a hectic day as one of the people on my team at work is out of the office dealing with a family health emergency. She is a key person in our on air fundraising drives and we have a drive starting next week. So we are scrambling at the last minute to make sure we’re ready to go. I’m hoping to take a breath this weekend.

It was up over 50 degrees today and we actually got some sun! It was so nice to get outside and have a walk in such nice weather. All the ice is melted off my lawn but there’s still a small patch of snow/ice on my patio. It will probably melt off tomorrow.

My lawn guys come on Wednesdays. They’re going to have a lot to clean up when they get here tomorrow. I didn’t lose any branches, but my back yard is covered with small boughs from the Doug fir trees.

I’m sure my rain gutters are full of this stuff as well. I’m happy that all the ice is gone so they can scramble up on the roof and blow out my gutters.

I had to toss out some groceries from my fridge after being without power for so long. I finally had the time to get to the grocery store tonight to restock. Once I got home I felt like I wanted to hit my sewing room but didn’t want to start a new project. Since I’m sort of at a stopping point on my new project that I cut fabrics for the other night, I decided to pull out my little storage box containing my scrappy Aboriginal trip quilt blocks.

There are fifteen finished blocks in that bin and a bunch of strip tubes that have been cut into pieces and are ready to sew together.

So I selected four sets and started getting them ready to assemble. You have to pick out the seams in various places in the strip tubes for each block to create the diagonal layout in the block.

All of this is laid out in Bonnie Hunter’s Scrappy Trip Tutorial. It’s a great tutorial that’s easy to follow. This is my third quilt I’ve made using this tutorial.

I did a lot of pinning and then sewed all those seams with chain piecing.

I got four of these blocks sewn together tonight.

Here’s a previous photo that shows a bunch of my completed blocks. It’s fun to see the diagonal diamond pattern emerge.

With the four blocks I made tonight I have a total of 19 blocks done. I’ll need 42 blocks for this top. That makes a generous throw size quilt.

The more blocks I add to this, the less chaotic it becomes. And it’s funny… I don’t think of this as a particularly colorful quilt, but there is A LOT of color in these blocks!

And you know that makes me very happy!

I played pickleball again last night and had an absolute blast! It was a really good group of players there. After going nearly two weeks without getting to play at all, I played three days in a row. I was on the schedule to play this morning but it was a little wet and I had a morning meeting that would have forced me to leave early. I sort of needed a break from pickleball!

It feels good to be back to a more normal life after so much disruption.

I’m so happy that our ice has had a bit of a melt. Enough that I was able to get Rico, Bender and myself out for a nice 2 mile walk before pickleball today. There are still some icy patches on the roads but it’s easy enough to pick your way around the neighborhood on bare pavement. It feels good to see the light at the end of the tunnel with all this ice.

We were all happy to get outside, even it it was during a light rain. We went four days without those dogs being outside for more than a pee! They’ve been good boys but they need some activity.

I played pickleball last night with my club at a large indoor facility and really had a good time and feel really good about how I played. Especially since it had been so long since I last played. I’m scheduled to play several times this week. Fingers crossed the weather cooperates. It doesn’t look very likely. We have a wet ten days coming up but at least the temps are rising.

After dinner I decided to head into my sewing room. I thought I might make the backing for my Fresh Start quilt but I just didn’t want to do it. I really don’t like making backings. so I decided to dig in and start cutting fabrics for my new project. This quilt.

The instructions wanted me to fussy cut all the blocks. I’m not a huge fan of fussy cutting. It’s a pain in the ass and it wastes a lot of fabric. Plus, I really like the organic feel of fabrics that are randomly cut. So I decided to fussy cut about half the fabrics and just cut freely on the remainder. Here’s some of the results.

And this last set was cut randomly.

See how pretty those big prints are when you just let the blooms fall where they may? I love them cut in this more casual way. I think this will be a good mix between the formality of the fussy cut pieces and the random blocks.

I used an 8 inch curve ruler I bought several years ago to fussy cut these blocks.

This pattern is from the new Kaffe Fassett book called Quilts by the Sea.

I almost always buy the Kaffe books when they come out, but I’m not sure I’ve ever made a quilt as it appear in one of the books. I find them to be great sources of inspiration and I get all kinds of ideas for fabric combos — even if I don’t feel inclined to make a quilt. I look at his books over and over and see new things with every turn of a page.

This book is my favorite of the last few Kaffe books. There are actually several quilts in here that I really want to make. And I love the one on the cover. Look how pretty that is!

I’m marking up this book with a pencil as I’m cutting these fabrics. The fabric names and numbers are listed on one page, and the page with the cutting instructions only has the number so I have to keep going back and forth between pages. I did get confused once for twice but didn’t actually make a mistake.

I got all the squares for the quilt cut tonight. I haven’t started cutting the borders and sashing. I won’t actually start sewing on this until my friend arrives in February so I’ve put all my cut pieces into one of my project boxes to keep it all organized and unwrinkled.

The large squares in the bottom of that bin are the squares that will later be cut in four pieces diagonally for the setting triangles. I won’t cut them until I’m ready to put the quilt together because I don’t want to expose all those bias edges just yet.

It was dark when I left for pickleball last night so I didn’t notice something pretty horrifying on my outing. I noticed it when I headed out for pickleball this afternoon.

A house about three blocks away from me, just across from the park where I walk my boys, had a huge tree fall and smash the back side of the house. I’m assuming this happened the same day that I lost power.

You can see the root ball of the tree and the broken roof.

You can see how broken the roof is from this view. and you can see the top part of the tree extending up and to the right from the middle of the roof.

There is a ton of damage to that house, but the Christmas lights on the front were shining bright today. I have no idea if anyone is in the house of if anyone could even inhabit that house now. That must have been so frightening when it happened.

I wish I had a bit more weekend. I could really use another Saturday and Sunday.

Our weather adventure here in Portland has continued in one way or another. My neighborhood is still pretty much covered in ice. We had another little freezing rain event on Thursday night. After work, at around 7 pm the wind was blowing and freezing rain was coating everything outside again. And then my power went out. I nearly lost it! It was so stressful to sit there in a silent house listening to the wind whip around again.

The good news is that the power was back on in an hour. I’ve never been so relieved in my life! I was sure I was going to be days without power again. I think a lot of people in Portland are feeling this about now. There are some people near me who have been without power for six or seven days with no end in sight.

The result of all of this, other than my frazzled nerves, is that my dogs and I have been stuck in the house for four days. The streets are still too slick to walk. This photo was taken Friday morning and it still looked like that this morning.

It’s finally going to start warming up tomorrow. Fingers crossed for a good deal of melting and a good walk for my boys.

I didn’t get any sewing done Thursday night and I was too tired last night after a really stressful week, but I did hit my sewing room today with the goal of finishing up my Fresh Start quilt top. And I got it done.

I only had four rows to sew together so it didn’t take long. I got them all pinned together and then sat down at my machine.

I sewed each row together, pressed, and then kept going. Once this section of four rows was done I pinned it to the section I finished the other night and rolled it up in my quilt burrito method so I could sew that final seam.

I don’t like sewing the final seam, but I love having it all done.

When it was all done and pressed I was going to put it back up on the design wall to take a photo and decided to go ahead and sew a line of stitching all the way around the edge to keep the bias edges of the corners of those blocks from getting all wonky.

It’s probably around 1/8 of an inch from the edge. You just need to make sure that it will be hidden by our binding.

And here it is all done. And because someone will ask, here’s the tutorial for my blocks.

I just love the final press! It’s so fun to look at all those blocks closely and savor every one.

I almost dug in and sot the backing made and then I realized how much I hate doing backings and decided to put it off until tomorrow. but I did lay out some fabric options on the backing fabric. I will sew a strip of fabric between the pieces of backing so I don’t have to match the backing fabric.

I’m not sure what I’ll do yet, but I’m thinking it will be the version with just the black fabric. I might get this backing done tomorrow.

Before I called it quits I decided to do an inventory of the fabrics for the quilt I’ll make when my friend visits next month. The last package arrived today so I have everything I need.

I’m glad I checked because I only have one yard the the plaid sashing fabric. I checked my local quilt store online and they have it so I’ll try to drop by there tomorrow and pick up a couple more yards. I’d like to have all the fabric for this quilt cut before my friend arrives. She’s already working on cutting all the fabrics for the Aboriginal quilt we’ll make for her when she visits.

I played pickleball tonight at a large indoor facility. I literally can’t remember the last time I played. I was concerned that I would play badly because it’s been so long I’m really happy with how I played. It was a fun night and I had some nice competitive play. I’m playing again tomorrow afternoon.

Fingers crossed for a nice walk for my boys tomorrow.

It felt so good to wake up in my own bed in a warm house this morning. But I woke up to this.

So much ice. So incredibly slick. So incredibly lucky… the wind that was forecast to come with the freezing rain didn’t materialize. If it had, we could have been plunged back into days without power. So I’m feeling pretty lucky today.

It melted off a little today but not as much as they predicted it would. But the ice can be pretty too.

After work I thought I’d venture out to my mail box. But after stepping onto the front porch I decided it was too risky.

It’s a slight downhill from the house to my mail box. I’m pretty sure I would have fallen on my ass if I’d attempted it. The mail can wait for a day or two.

The temps will get progressively warmer over the next few days and we don’t dip below freezing anytime in the ten day forecast. So this will melt… in time.

Since I had to toss a bunch of stuff from my fridge after being without power for 82 hours and not wanting to risk getting sick, I had a dinner of fried eggs and toast. I love breakfast for dinner! I might be eating this for several days if the ice doesn’t go away so I can venture to the grocery store.

I headed down the hall when I was done to do a little sewing. I decided I wanted to give my stormy weekend host a corn bag to ease her sore neck. I made a quick tutorial for these corn bags last year. You can find it here. This whipped up really fast tonight and luckily I still had some feed corn in the garage.

It’s basically a flannel bag with sections filled with whole feed corn. You microwave it and put it on what ails you. I have one that I use all the time in the winter just to feel warm on chill days. The shape and size of this one makes it great to wrap around your neck, drape over a shoulder or wrap around a knee. I’ve made a lot of these — 100 lbs of feed corn worth!

After that I decided to work on my Fresh Start quilt top. I had pinned four rows together on Saturday hoping the power would come on and I would be ready to sew.

So I took advantage of my power and warmth and sewed all four of these rows together, pressed them, and then sewed all four into one section.

I just love seeing sewn rows and sections on my ironing board. I love getting that closer look at all the fabrics and how the blocks play together.

Have I mentioned that I’m a pinner? I like taking the time to pin because the sewing goes much faster and I get a better result.

Well, usually I get a better result.

This corner join is about 1/8 of an inch off. It drives me crazy but not crazy enough to pick out the seam and do it again. But it’s motivation for me to be more careful on subsequent seams.

I loved how this two-row piece looked on my black wooden sewing chair.

I’ve toyed with the idea of Mod Podging fabric to this chair several times. This makes me think I should actually do it!

And I always love the view of a finished section on my ironing board.

With those four rows sewn together and pressed, this quilt top is half-way complete.

Maybe I’ll finish it tomorrow night.

My dogs slept hard most of today while I worked. I think the weekend was a little hard on them too, although they had a blast playing with corgi Bella. They didn’t spend much time out of the house today and a walk was definitely out of the question. It seems unlikely that we’ll get a walk tomorrow. I’ll be lucky to make my way to the mail box!

My boss is encouraging those of us who had stressful weekends to take a day or two off. I’ll be looking at my calendar to see if I can put that off this weekend.

I had visions of hunkering down at home on our stormy weekend and sewing and cooking. That plan was shuttled when our winter storm caused my power to go out around 9 am on Saturday. At 11 am two trees came down across the street amid frightening wind gusts… one landing on my neighbor’s house and the other resting on the power lines.

Lucky for my neighbor, the one on the house is on the garage and not living space.

I’m so lucky to have a friend one street over who never lost power and invited me over when my power hadn’t come back on by Saturday afternoon and the temp in my house was dropping fast. The temps all weekend, and still as I type, have been well below freezing. Not a great time to be without power.

So I bundled up the dogs and some supplies and headed over. I was so worried that my dogs would be badly behaved, but they were soooo good. They loved hanging out with my friend’s 11 month old corgi puppy. She kept them active. That and my twice daily walks to check out what was happening in my very quiet and cold neighborhood wore them out!

Long story short, it’s now Tuesday night at about 10 pm and I’ve only been home for a couple hours. 82 hours without power! And all in well below freezing temps.

It’s been a very stressful weekend. There is so much damage all around the Portland area from downed trees. Four days later, over 30,000 homes are still without power. There were over 150,000 homes without power at the worst of it. I’m sure some people will wait for days to get their power back.

So, needless to say, I didn’t get any of my cooking done this weekend. In fact, I had to toss out the chicken I planned to cook. And I didn’t get any sewing done at all. It was so frustrating to have all that time on my hands and not be able to be productive — and have something to occupy my anxious mind.

You can find lots of pictures and videos of the aftermath of our terrible weather event on the internet. But here are a few from my immediate neighborhood.

This one shows a street a block away from me that was completely blocked by some big trees.

Someone had chainsawed a path through the trees by the time I walked by.

This is another street where a row of trees came down and took out about 80 feet of power lines.

The tree company cleared these trees out yesterday and the power company was working on this street this morning. This is a street that dead ends into the park near me so these people were completely stuck for days! A UPS driver even got stuck there while making deliveries!

As I was walking my boys yesterday afternoon I saw the Asplundh truck (tree removal experts) heading up the road. It’s a wonderful site when there are trees down all over the place!

I stopped and watched as they turned onto my road. After three days it was so good so see some help arrive!

As I got further into my walk I took a loop past my house and saw that there were several power company vehicles on the street. So I walked up there and said to all the power workers, “I don’t know you very well, but I love you!” They all laughed.

I asked them if they were going to be able to restore my power soon and they said they were having a conference about it. They asked me how long I had been without power. It was three days by that time.

Long story short… the answer was, apparently, no. They went down the street and worked on some other issues while the tree was removed. There were a lot of people still needing their help.

It didn’t take long for them to have that tree removed from the power line. But I would have to wait to see the restoration of my power.

My friend’s husband and I took a drive around the neighborhood last night to see how it was looking. It was nice to see more and more streets and neighborhoods with power. But there were still lots of very dark neighborhoods near us.

My friends’ house where I stayed all weekend is on the street next to me… basically right behind the house with the tree resting on the roof. As we were doing dinner dishes tonight my friend noticed that there were lights on my street! So she told me to hightail it over to my house to check to see if I had power.

We have another storm tonight… this one featuring freezing rain! When I got outside I saw that my car was completely covered with ice. It would have taken 20 minutes to clear the windshield. So I walked gingerly to my house.

You can see the sheen of ice all over my front sidewalk and on the snow. I had even put ice melt on this sidewalk this afternoon! So slick!

It was so wonderful to see the lights on when I got home!!!

And when I got inside the temperature was already up to 50 degrees! It was 35 degrees when I was here earlier today.

I walked back to my friend’s house and packed up my boys and all my stuff. My friend’s husband cleared the ice off my car, and I was on my way.

Luckily, our freezing rain storm that was predicted for tonight has fizzled a little in my area. There is a solid sheet of ice everywhere, but predicted winds haven’t materialized. I was not looking forward to more trees coming down! Other areas in Portland are seeing a little more wind tonight.

I’ve been pretty worried about my pipes freezing. The high temps since Saturday have been in the low 20s. I did leave all my faucets running the entire time I was gone and checked every day to make sure they were still running. I’m pretty relieved that my pipes are all intact and flowing tonight.

The temps will start to go up tomorrow and melt all the ice. Then it will be up in the 50s before the weekend is over. It’s going to be really wonderful to hear the rain on the roof!

Tonight I’m so incredibly appreciative of friends who generously welcomed me into their home and took excellent care of me and my boys. I’m so very lucky and blessed.

I took the dogs for a walk today at about 4:30 or so. I bundled up in a warm coat, a knit hat, a fleece neck gator and gloves.

The boys were almost naked. They sported only their lighted collars and leashes. They were not phased by the cold.

It was a little below 30 degrees at that time but the stiff breeze made it nice and brisk. We had a nice walk of over two miles and it was nice to not have to deal with rain.

Our storm is coming, but they have decided that we won’t get as much snow as they initially thought. The forecast is calling for 1-4 inches starting Saturday morning. The bigger issue will be wind which brings down tree branches which causes power outages. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we keep power. It looks like the wind will be worse closer to the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge… which is on the waaaaay opposite of Portland from me. It’s supposed to get pretty cold tonight. Well into the teens. I already have all my faucets dripping water to keep my pipes from freezing. In my six decades of living, I’ve never had frozen pipes. Fingers crossed for this adventure.

I had to go into the office this afternoon to pick up a few things. I noticed that they had salted the roads. You can see the stripes on the road from the salt water slurry.

This is a fairly new thing here. I bet they haven’t been salting the roads for more than a few years.

One thing that will make this more challenging is that they don’t clear roads around here. We just have to wait for it all to melt. Our temps are not going to get above freezing until Wednesday. So the next few days may be prime for staying home. It’s common for the roads to be very slick for days after a snow storm.

I did spend a little bit of time in my sewing room tonight. I sorted out all my Fresh Start blocks and got the sashing colors nicely distributed in the pile. Then they all went back up on the design wall and I tweaked a few things.

It looks pretty good to me. I will take a last look at it tomorrow and then I’ll start sewing it all together. with the weather tomorrow, It should be pretty easy to get this all sewn together in one day.

I received the package of fabrics I ordered mid day today. These are fabrics I need for the quilt my friend and I will make when she visits next month.

I have a couple things I want to do before I start cutting into these fabrics. It’s a good thing too because they sent one of the fabrics I ordered in the wrong color way. This color way is magenta and I ordered red.

The one I need has a lovely black background and red flowers. It’s already on it’s way to me. I took advantage of the situation and ordered a piece of the fabric used for the cornerstones to be shipped in the same package. I wasn’t going to add the cornerstones and then someone commented that they probably show up more in person then they do in the book. So I switched plans and will include the cornerstones. I have a really good method I use to make sashing with cornerstones. I’ve written about it before, but I’ll share again when I get into constructing this quilt.

Some of these fabrics are really wonderful. I just love this one called Carpet Cookies.

GAH! Talk about eye candy!

Looking forward to a weekend of warm comfort food and getting a lot done.

I haven’t done any sewing for two evenings. I was tired last night. I didn’t feel well yesterday and was worn out by the time the evening rolled around. I have been staying up waaaaay too late this week. My body is telling me to knock it the hell off!

I did take my boys for a nice long 2.5 mile walk yesterday. We had a break in the rain, my foot felt really good, and we kept going!

We had a quick walk tonight, but just 1.5 miles because I had to go to the grocery store. We’re expecting what could be significant snow starting tomorrow afternoon and when snow is coming, you have to shop for food!

They’re predicting anywhere from 1-8 inches of snow in Portland. So I needed a few basic things in anticipation of being stuck in the house the entire long weekend. I also wanted to fill up my car with gas because it’s good to have a full tank when the weather goes nuts.

We don’t handle snow well here.

The good news is that they’re only predicting a chance of freezing rain. That stuff is way too scary. I’m happy to just be expecting snow. But it’s going to be cold for a few days. The high on Saturday is supposed to be around 20 degrees. YIKES!

They have already announced that schools will be closing early tomorrow. You do NOT want to be out and about in Portland when a winter storm hits. You could end up spending the night in your car.

So I’ve been thinking it will be a good weekend for some warm comfort food. I have a chicken in my freezer, so I’m going to roast a chicken on Saturday. I bought some potatoes, onions, mushrooms and carrots to roast with it. That will be a lovely, warm and comforting meal. Plus… leftovers. I love a roasted chicken. It’s really easy and really good. I hardly ever think to make them.

I also saw the tortillas in the store and remembered that I have a bunch of chili verde in my freezer. So I grabbed a bag and pulled some chili verde out of the freezer when I got home. More warm and comforting yumminess for the weekend.

I did hit my sewing room when I got home but I didn’t do much. I wanted to pull all my Fresh Start blocks off the design wall because I want to sort them by the color of the sashing strips, distribute those colors nicely through the piles, and then get them back up on the design wall before the final tweaking.

While I was pulling them all off the wall I thought I’d take a look at a couple options with these blocks to see what I thought.

I’m not considering changing how I put these blocks together, I just wanted to see if either of these layouts sparked an idea. I really like the one with all the black. If I was to do this, I would want to use a black that had a more graphic design to it. Maybe a large floral. but it would still have to read black. I might make the center strips wider, or the sashing wider with the corner triangles smaller. It’s an idea.

I don’t like the option with the white jumble.

Right now my blocks are sitting in two piles on my cutting table. I’ll start playing with them tomorrow after work.

If I get completely stuck at home I may have this top sewn together on Saturday. If I get stuck at home ALL weekend (Monday is a holiday) I may get a lot more than that done!

A couple of people asked me about the pattern for my current sofa quilt. It’s a free pattern that I picked up at one of my local quilt stores a number of years ago. It’s pretty simple.

The pattern references a kit, but they gave away the pattern for free in the store. I made two quits on this pattern — one is the throw on my sofa. The other was a queen size quilt for a friend to celebrate her divorce.. It’s a great beginner quilt.

As I was looking in my pattern bin for the Sprinkles pattern I ran across a lot of patterns that I’ve never made. Some of them make me wonder why I ever bought them. I will certainly never make some of them.

There were a few that I want to make. . . some day.

I’ve always loved this elephant pattern. I think it would be really cool made out of Australian Aboriginal fabrics. I would probably make this a wall hanging rather than a full size quilt.

This zig zag quilt uses the Straight Out of Line ruler my friend gave me for Christmas. I’ve had this pattern for many years. I have a few ideas in my head for this pattern.

I bought this next one a couple of years ago. I thought it looked like a fun and quick make. I’ll probably make it some day.

And the last thing that caught my eye was this…

I have no idea where I got this! I know that I didn’t buy it. But I can see that it might come in handy. Maybe some nice winter coats are in Rico’s and Bender’s future!

One more day of work then it’s time to hunker down and stay warm! Too bad my boys aren’t cuddlers!