Demolition vs. Creation

When I left for the grocery store yesterday morning, the Retired Resident Engineer was hard at work tearing siding from the house.

For at least a year, we've been noticing a water puddle on a covered patio off our daylight basement, and it became clear that it wasn't a collection of rainwater. In fact, we had a slow leak. A couple of weeks ago, he tore the ceiling panels from the "covered" part of the patio to take a look. In the process he tore out lots of wet insulation and found the pipe where the water was coming from. As it turns out, he needed to go in through the wall to actually get to the source of the leak and fix it. When he was finally able to reach the pipe and remove it, he found this.

So, yeah...that'll do it. This meant the water to the kitchen sink was turned off. I was sort of hoping for a two-day fix (meaning, dinner out), but he actually managed to get it fixed in one day. Now he'll have to repair the siding and stain it before the job is complete, but at least there's no more water pooling down on the patio. He checked it a couple of times before going to bed to make sure his fix was holding, and it was. His efforts probably saved us a boat load of money on plumbing bills. With all the money he saved, I should probably make a trip to the fabric store, wouldn't you agree?

While he was doing that, I was able to finish sewing together another section of the flamingos. They are about half finished now, and maybe even more than half, because the most complicated sections are done.

Yesterday's efforts included getting to work on the body of the orange flamingo. To keep it clearly separated from the neck, I'm using a different set of fabrics in peachy pastels, as opposed to the bright oranges I've used so far.

After I took that picture, I switched out one of the pieces...marked with a blue arrow below...because it was a little too close to the pink pieces above it. 

The pink pieces are a part of the pink flamingo, and I wanted the orange body to be clearly different from the pink.

There are a couple of other areas that have me a little worried. In the image below, the pink flamingo seems to extend a little too far out over his beak (blue arrow).

I considered switching one of the background pieces to dark beak colors, but that doesn't seem quite right either. Looking at my original photograph, that section is clearly background. You can see it marked with a blue arrow below. Also, I'm afraid switching the colors would square off the beak too much and it would lose the curve there.

I'm thinking when I sew the sections together, that problem might disappear. In this technique, the seams are left intentionally mismatched, but it could be too much there.

Also, there seems to be a problem where the pink arrow is. The sections were off by about 3/4 of an inch.

That usually means I've oriented one of the pieces in the wrong direction. Although I studied it for about ten minutes and checked the pieces, I couldn't find an error. I'll look at it again today with fresh eyes and see if I can find it. I've been known to simply measure twice, trim once, and then force that sucker to fit. I'm not opposed to doing it here, so stay tuned for the possibility of demolition quilting.

Sadie likes to sit on my lap in the morning. When I get up to write these posts, I always tuck her in, snug as the proverbial bug in a rug, while I come upstairs. Here is this morning's effort.

Today I have a couple of housekeeping chores to do...mainly, cleaning the downstairs. Matthew is completely moved out and into his new place now. He came over and cleaned last night, but I haven't inspected it to see if it's up to mom standards yet. I'll finish up down there (hopefully, quickly), and throw some clothes in the wash. Aside from that, nothing but sewing. I love a good NBS day.