Piecemeal

Good morning, my friends! How's spring treating you so far? Ours has been wet up until now. We're supposed to get a relatively warm and sunny day today. Mike and I have been strategizing about how to get our grocery shopping done while still getting out and walking that new trail I've been eyeing. It's still dark outside, and so I can't tell yet if the forecast is correct. If so, we'll be heading out early for our beloved Egg McMuffin, followed by grocery shopping, followed by putting away groceries, followed by lunch, and then followed by a walk along that new trail. It's all a big mystery as I'm writing this.

And "good grief" is the only way to describe yesterday's sewing. Fortunately, I had my trusty stitching cat by my side for support. He nosed through my blue scraps looking for appropriate background fabrics.

In the process, he discovered the handy chin-scratching capabilities of these particular three-drawer bins. He gave them a five-whisker review.

Ordinarily, I'm a cut-as-you-go kind of gal. For whatever reason, I decided it made sense to do all the cutting ahead of time. I started with all these little pieces. They're mostly 2-1/4 inch squares, but there are some 2-5/8 inch and 3-inch thrown in there for variety.

And you know when everything is 2-1/4 inches, along with a few at 2-5/8 inches, there are going to be some half square triangles. So...what the heck. I made those too. That took forever. The pattern could be a little more clear on which color of gray I'm supposed to be using. 

And with all of that, you might think I was ready to start sewing, but oh no. No, no, no. Silly you. I still needed to make all of these little pieces.

Good grief. I spent the whole live-long day just cutting and piecing and getting ready for actual piecing together. 

So, when I make a quilt like this, I like to divide it up into sections. I made an extra copy of the diagram and divided it up as evenly as I could. I'll start with the upper left section.

Everything has been trimmed to 2-1/4 inches now, and it's just a matter of sewing the little squares together in the proper order. I like to lay them out on some sort of flat surface (a cutting board works well for this) that I can easily transport from table to sewing machine. So, I laid out the first section thus:

And then I looked at the clock. Good grief, it was time to stop for the day and make dinner.

So, I covered everything with rulers because...you know...mice. That was where I left it for the day.

So, I'm still waiting to see what the day's weather holds. If it's a nice day, I doubt I'll get any sewing done. And, if not, I'll be back here after we do our grocery shopping. As you might guess, Tiny House #10 is on hold until I can wrangle all these pieces into a herd and sew them together. 

The day is just getting a little bit light outside. I can see it's going to be breezy. Sorry to leave you in such suspense, but it can't be avoided. Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion of How We Spent Our Day.