Snowed In

Happy chilly Saturday to you, my friends! We're snowed in here at the Three Cats Ranch. I'm imagining the main roads are probably passable, but we can't get out of our driveway. I'm very glad we did our grocery shopping on Wednesday because we haven't been able to get out since Thursday. Mike put on his boots yesterday and filled the bird feeders. I imagine the birdies are grateful, although they never say so.

Sadie is not happy about this white stuff at all.

She can't go outside, and there's precious little sunshine inside for warming her tiny body. She did find this one little sliver yesterday.

Looking outside, I was amused by the hummingbird feeder with its snowcap. Also, notice the spots on the window. That's hummingbird poop. Don't blame me...I'm just the messenger.

No doubt, the "nectar" is frozen. We generally have Anna's hummingbirds year-round, but I haven't seen any for several weeks. It's probably too cold for them just now.

Looking out another direction, the avalanche on our garage roof holds on, but the gap between the upper and lower is getting wider. We're supposed to get above freezing today, and I expect the warmer temps and sunshine will bring it thundering down. I use that word "thundering" intentionally, because that's how it sounds when it lets loose.

Okay, so we're not going outside. Let's do some sewing, okay? I did the day's inchy. This one was all backstitch. She didn't say anything about the contents of the teaspoon, so I'm waiting to see what color we'll put there. 

I had one housekeeping chore, and then I went to work on the quilting. Here's what I meant when I said the next round of leaves is oddly shaped. See the overlapping leaves in the middle of the image below?

Should I quilt these long skinny leaves outlined in red?

Or should I quilt the leaf behind it outlined in green?

I could do both at once, but I decided to stick with the long skinny top leaf. For the first one, I did a traditional feather.

For the next one, I outlined each side of the main center vein, and then filled in with circles.

For the next one, I did a series of echoing lines.

And then I did a sort of "ferny" feather on the fourth one.

Four leaves at a time is a good amount for a single day. I run out of ideas, and I get tired of doing it. Besides, when I spend all my time at Eliza upstairs, I start missing my sewing room downstairs. It seemed like a good time to get started sewing together the quilt top for New Mexico Kitchen. 

While I was in the process of making the quilt blocks, I pulled several fabrics from my stash that were potentially useful. I've been thinking about this for a while. I have about a yard of this one along with some scrap pieces. 

It's a fabric from one of the first quilts I ever made...this "Salsa" quilt I made for Erik way back before I even started blogging. If I'm remembering correctly, I used that fabric on the back.

This is how the quilt looks on the pattern cover.

The middle border there is made from crosscuts of many strips sewn together. I really don't want to do that, and so I have my own ideas about how to finish this off. First, I wanted to fussy cut some of the elements from the fabric shown above to make cornerstones.

Sadie is here to help me explain the rest. I'm using that fabric where she sits to make little strips in the sashing between the blocks.

Here's the first one:

I'm only using the cornerstones in the quilt's center; meaning, six in all. I might have done them all the way around, but I wanted each one to be different, and six was my limit. Here's the second block sewn to the first.

I was coming to the end of my sewing day when I added the third block, completing the top row.

That's where I left it. Today I'll just continue on, adding the blocks until they're all sewn together. Then I'll add three borders, using different fabric to substitute for all those little colored squares. It will look similar, but it will be less tedious. I doubt I'll get it finished today, but I'll keep working on it until it's done.

Also on today's agenda: do the day's inchy, quilt four more leaves, sew quilt blocks together, and do my workout. I've been slacking off on my workout in order to have time to bake things like cherry pies and banana bread. It gives me an upper arm workout as I bend my arm lifting my fork to my mouth. You might call it a "resistance" workout, except there's no resistance. As everyone knows, resistance is futile. Maybe I need a heavier fork...or more reps. It will be a tasty experiment either way.

So we'll continue on in our snowy abode. I'm really hoping we can get out of here tomorrow. There's a sale this weekend on a product I use daily. I'd really like to take advantage of the lower price, but wrecking the car would probably defeat the money-saving purpose. Better safe than sorry, right? And the same applies to you, my friends. Stay home and stay safe. It's a wild world out there.