Piles of Pinwheels

Before I get to the properties of pinwheels, it's time to pick a winner for the Bag Ladies of the Fat Quarter Club Stitch-along.

Mr. Random spun his wheel and came up with:

#3--Nan Brown

(Pause here until wild applause dies down.) Congratulations, Nan! I've sent you an email, so check your inbox. And thanks to all who participated. I noticed some folks are posting to the FlickR group, but not linking up at the party. Not to worry. We're a small group, and so I'll check in each month and link up with any stragglers. Bag ladies. What can you do but give them a nudge in the right direction? And if you didn't win...still not to worry. I guess the message of the day is that there are no worries here. We're a small group, and so everyone who is stitching is going to win eventually.

It was an NBS day yesterday, and I'm surprised to say I have Pinwheel Poetry ready for quilting now. The remaining 14 pinwheels went together pretty fast, and they're even laid out with a semblance of symmetry. Don't be worried if you can't see the symmetry. You probably have to be a little off kilter to make it out.

Less than an hour later, it was all sewn together.

Ten or more fabrics auditioned for borders. I really wanted to use the little "jacks" fabric from my stash, but with so many colors and so much movement in the pinwheels it seemed too busy. Then I tried out a few solids, but couldn't decide on a color. Red might have been nice, but the red in the pinwheels is a dark red...almost a rust color...and that was too dark for such a bright quilt. Finally, I settled for giving it a rainbow flange and using my first choice, the "jacks" fabric.

In my wanderings through the forest of my stash, I found this fabric. It seems as if it would have been illegal not to use it for the back. And there's the last pinwheel made from the 284 bonus triangles I started with. That dark fabric is a royal blue, and not the black it appears to be in this image.

Also, I cut a few of those pinwheels to use in the cornerstones for the quilt top.

This quilt was made to answer the March challenge for Kathleen Tracy's Small Quilt Lovers group on Facebook. The "Be My Little Valentine" quilt was made for the January challenge. 

These two little quilts will be used for kitty beds in the new camper. There are some cabinets above the head of the bed where kitties can claim cubbies and I'll just fold these little quilts in half so they can each have their own. Smitty told me that Sadie can have the Valentine quilt. He'll keep the pinwheels for himself.

Hearts are for girls. Pinwheels are more apurropriate for boy cats.

Sadie is okay with that. She likes the hearts. She helped me piece together some strips of scrap batting for the batting in Smitty's quilt.

It's very impurrtant to butt the edges together carefully. I appurrove of these.

So the Pinwheel Poetry quilt is ready for quilting now. I need to spray baste the layers together and then I'll do some straight line quilting on my mid-arm machine. It seems like a good opportunity to practice using my rulers again. I'll use that same rainbow fabric from the flange for the binding. Hopefully, I can finish it today.

It's been a while since I showed you the progress on the tomatoes. (When writing in catspeak, it's hard to go back to peoplespeak and not write words like "purrogress." I only mention this in case I lapse into Catonese occasionally.) As for the tomatoes, three seeds were planted in each cup, and nearly all have germinated now. The ones that haven't, probably won't...and sometimes I lose count while I'm planting them. The seeds are very tiny, and so it wouldn't surprise me if I missed a few.

Their little stems are so spindly, and I was propping a few of them up with toothpicks after I took this picture. When they start getting their first true leaves, I'll thin each cup to one plant. They're supposed to go out into the greenhouse by April 1st, but the greenhouse is still in disarray from last season. We keep waiting for a warm weekend to clean it out, but it doesn't appear that is going to happen any time soon.

You're looking at last night's snowfall. There is about four inches of accumulation. This was supposed to amount to short-lived flurries. And to that I say, Lying Liars. Oh well. If you can believe the Lying Liars, the temperatures will get into the 40's today and it will begin to rain. I have my doubts. It's okay, though. I'll just sit inside and sew.

Tomorrow I'll need to start the process of packing up for my class on Thursday. It's a dreaded job because there is so much crap to drag along, and that doesn't even include my clothes. I figure I'll pack up the sewing stuff tomorrow and pack up my clothes and toiletries on Wednesday. The class starts Thursday morning at the very civilized hour of 10:30 a.m., which gives me plenty of time to drive up to Vancouver, Washington...a little more than an hour north of us. It will be less of a hassle from last year because I already know what photograph I'm using, and so it will narrow down my fabric choices. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm using this photograph of my brother:

My goal in taking the class for a second time is to solidify the technique in my brain. With that in mind, I have an idea about doing a second photograph in my motel in the evenings. I'm not talking about doing any sewing for it...just drawing out the pattern. For that (and if my brain at the end of the day still resembles something other than jello), I'll do this photograph of a blue jay from our bird feeder.

The sky is getting brighter as I write this, and so it's probably time to get on with my day. Sewing awaits.