Rainy Day

It rained hard most of the day today.  That meant that the entire household was holed up inside for the majority of the day.  Mike went out to do some recycling, and we had to pick up a new antibiotic for Gracie.  It seems the one we've been giving her (a liquid) for the last ten days has not helped one iota.  This is surprising because she is obviously feeling better.  Nevertheless, her urine sample was not at all improved, and in some ways it was worse.  Now we're on a new broader spectrum antibiotic that will hopefully take care of it.  This one is a pill.  Poor thing.  She is not happy about this at all.  Neither are we.  We just keep telling her it's all part of being a cat, but somehow I don't think she's convinced.

Aside from that, not much happened today other than sewing.  But before I get to that, I want to show you what I won recently.  First, this book from Sandi Colwell, who gave away a copy as a part of her giveaway for the 100 Blocks Blog Tour by Quiltmaker.  Sandi blogs at Quilt Cabana Patterns and her book is just delightful.  As someone who likes to make doll quilts, this book will really come in handy.  Thank you Sandi!

Also, I was one of the random drawing winners from the Blogger's Quilt Festival recently.  I won three patterns and four fat quarters from Prairie Moon Quilts.  Their sponsorship of the Blogger's Quilt Festival was so generous, and I'm thrilled that my name was drawn for this nice prize package.  Fun, huh?  Thank you, Prairie Moon Quilts! 

Then I spent the rest of the day sewing.  I added another row of blocks to the Salt Water Taffy quilt I'm making.  This quilt is flannel.  There are 12 rows of 10 blocks in all.  There are two pieced blocks in each row.  Now I have five rows complete, and so I'm about half way finished.  This is made completely from scraps in my stash, although I did purchase a flannel backing fabric a couple of years ago in preparation for this quilt.  Thanks to the NewFO Challenge, it moved from my to-do list to being a WIP this year.  The colors remind me of the colors I see when I purchase a mixed bag of salt water taffy over on the Oregon coast.  Thus, the name.

With the Blogger's BOM complete now, it's time to think about sewing the 13 blocks together.  Today I laid them out on the floor so that I could study the colors and audition some fabrics to use for the sashing, cornerstones, setting triangles, borders and back.  Clearly Smitty was a big help.  Not.

Smitty has a new game he likes to play where we throw a little ball up the stairs and he runs after it.  Being a ball, it tumbles down the stairs with him in hot pursuit, cat over teakettle style.  It's pretty hilarious.  And it's a short game since he expends a lot of energy doing it.  Therefore, he's good for about a half dozen tosses up the stairs, and then he's ready for a nap.  That's what we did between the last image and the next one.

So I haven't made any decisions yet, but I'm thinking that blue/green/purple batik for the sashing and maybe the setting triangles.  But I haven't ruled out the green and blue polka dot.  You can see a sort of lime green fabric just below center in this image that I'm thinking will work for the cornerstones, and I've kind of settled on the purple polka dot for the border.  There is an inner border, and I'm fairly well settled on the batik for that, which means the green and blue polka dot would be better for the setting triangles.  I haven't made any decisions yet.  There are a lot of different fabrics and colors in these blocks.  The instructions suggest a piano key border, but I really don't want to do that.  I'm thinking the polka dots will do nicely.

As for the backing, I'm tempted to use this fabric.  It's been sitting in my stash for the longest time.  I used it for the back on another quilt.  The colors are right, and if I were to follow the curving lines of the print, it could even make a good quilting pattern.  I have large pieces that were cut off the sides of the original quilt it was used for, and so it would need to be a pieced back.  What do you think?

It's a busy quilt.  I'm not sure how it's going to look when it's finished.  I'd rather use fabrics from my stash than buy something new.  If it doesn't appeal to me when it's finished, it can always turn into a charity quilt.  I have it all laying out on the floor so that I can study it when I'm in the sewing room.  I usually let things stew for a few days before I make any final decisions.

Then I turned my attention to the Debbie Mumm quilt I started last month.  

Smitty was handy lending a paw to the process.

Last month I did the house blocks.  This month I'm making the star and moon blocks and the heart blocks.  These are fun to make.  I like all the colors and fabrics.  Here are the two star and moon blocks I made with Smitty's excellent help.

I like those with the moon in the center.  Cute.  Next time I sew, I'll make the heart blocks.  That probably won't be until Monday at the earliest.  We're going to work on the downstairs tomorrow and that will take most of the day, I imagine.  We need to pick up a wine shipment from one of the local wineries as well.

Next week will start to get busy.  Monday will need to be a grocery day, and Matthew will be here from Klamath Falls this week.  And Matthew has some big news to share:  he was hired for a one-year internship at one of the large electronics companies in town.  This is a tremendous opportunity for him.  It will mean delaying his graduation a little bit, but he will continue to work on finishing his degree while he's doing his internship.  That means he will be moving back to Portland next month, and we will be so happy to have him close by again.  So congratulations to Matthew!  I'm not a proud mom or anything.