Sewing Structures

Good morning, my friends, and Happy Thursday. Smitty is happy to see a lot less snow and more grass from his living room perch. Can morning sunbaths be far behind? With the time change, we've been eating dinner in daylight, and the light late in the day has been a welcome sight.

With such nice weather I got out for a walk yesterday. I decided to walk at the bottom of our hill. I'm looking forward to seeing what the farmers will plant in their fields this year.

If you've been reading for a while, then this scene will be familiar to you. I can't walk by here without taking a picture of the barn and silo. I believe the adjacent property has been purchased by a new owner. The fence there is new. With such a tall fence, I might think they're trying to keep deer out. On the other hand, it appears there is cattle grazing to the right of the image and outside the frame. Possibly the tall fence is to discourage predators.

There is a side street off my usual walking path. Ordinarily, I walk on by and continue on the same road. Yesterday I thought I'd turn left here and see something different.

It takes me past a nursery and a few homes. Here, a big tree was taken out recently. I wonder if this was the tree responsible for our recent power outage. It's hard to take out a big tree like this, and so I'm sure there was a good reason. We've taken out a few big ones ourselves, but never without a good reason.

As I walked back the other direction, I noticed they were taking down the tree beside it too. You can see it's been limbed. (Indeed there was debris all around from the limbing.) The trunk will be taken down in sections.

As I walked by the nursery, these rows of pots appealed to my sense of order.

Walking on, I came to the intersection with the state highway. I knew this is where I would turn around, but I'd hoped to see something more interesting along the way. As my friend Kate has noted in her photography expeditions, everything is brown right now. I'm hoping I'll see more wildflowers in the coming weeks. As for this intersection, if I turned left, I'd be walking on this busy state highway.

Straight ahead would take me to the South Store Cafe, where we sometimes get our oatmeal.

To the right was the Midway Firehouse Pizza. We've eaten here a few times. It isn't particularly memorable. "Midway" is the name of the road, and the "firehouse" is to the right and outside the frame. If I walked down this road, it would take me to the main road back to my house.

I turned around and went back the way I came. Only one bird would pose for its picture. This is a scrub jay.

I made a quilt of one once. This one was at our bird feeder.

These pyracantha berries were the only bit of color I saw along my way. They are about the size of peas.

As I approached the spot where my car was parked, I took one more barn photo.

Meanwhile, back at The Ranch, Smitty was champing at the bit to get busy on our sewing projects.

We made the fourth of the barn block samplers. I wish Moda had included the names of these blocks with the instructions for making them.

Here are the four I have so far.

When that was finished, it was time to start on my new project, Painted Ladies. When I purchased the pattern, I was considering using one of my many grays for the background fabric. Then, when I realized it was commemorating San Francisco's "Painted Ladies," I decided I needed something more representative of an asphalt road. I ended up purchasing 2-1/2 yards of this one.

My quilt is going to be all scrappy, but I went ahead and cut all the background pieces. Sadie helped with that.

I cut 40 rectangles, 80 squares, and 40 half square triangles. The quilt has 34 full blocks, and 6 partials.

It was getting late in the day by then, and so I made just one block and called it quits. The Tiny Houses are using my smallest scraps. This quilt will use some larger ones. The block was easy to make. It took longer to find a scrap that was large enough to accommodate the size pieces I needed.

Here's a picture of the pattern cover again. My background will be darker, but I'm going to stick pretty close to the colors she used in hers. I like the color placement shown here. 

Of course, my fabrics will all be different, as will my "gingerbread" embellishments. I'll be using a lot of old ribbon and other little cut off bits I have lying around. My goal is to make four whole blocks and one partial block with each go-round. I've made an extra copy of the cover, and I'll hold my place by crossing off each block configuration as I make it. Today's goal will be to finish three more whole blocks and one partial. 

If I can get those finished, I'll move on to the last project on my list of WIPs, My Whimsical Garden. I'm making these two blocks per go-round. Here are the blocks I have for this quilt so far:

Okay, so that's enough to keep me busy for a while. It's my day to work out on The Rack. But first...slow-stitching. What's on your agenda for today?