Free At Last!

Good morning, my friends. I'm happy to announce that we are free to move about the city...for now, at least. It's been an unusual couple of weeks of weather. Snow isn't unusual in these parts. Ice isn't unusual either, unfortunately. But to get hit boom, boom, boom with snow, ice, and more ice was quite unusual. Fortunately, our temperatures have warmed into the 40s and 50s range, and it has been raining. The ice and snow can't last long under those conditions. 

Sadie spent her morning yesterday conducting tests of the new French Roses quilt. I believe it has passed all its testing now, and she can safely resume her morning snuggles.

The day was open yesterday insofar as we'd done any sort of planning. We were expecting someone to come by to pick up our now-empty two-drawer file cabinet. In our purging process, we recycled paper from six full file cabinet drawers. Now, we have just half a file cabinet drawer of papers left...mainly receipts for warranties and income tax returns. It seems we lose the need to retain documents when reaching a certain age. We've already given away a four-drawer file cabinet, and now the two-drawer is gone too. 

In preparation for receiving this particular file cabinet visitor, Mike had been up and down the driveway on the ATV, checking for ice patches. It was fairly clear, and so we decided it was time to drive into town for some groceries. He also needed to pick up the new faucet to replace the one outdoor faucet that froze and broke with our cold snap. So, my sewing day didn't even get started until mid-afternoon. 

As I mentioned yesterday, the prompt for Project Quilting 15.2 was announced: "Sky Color." The sky comes in many colors depending on time and place, but we were told we could only use a limited amount of blue.

While we were out and about, I did some thinking on this, and came up with a few ideas. When we made it home, I perused my stash for any fabrics I'd purchased to represent skies. I have a surprising number of them. For this project, I selected this one.

From there, I went in search of a line drawing. I liked this one, and I manipulated it some in Photoshop to make it work for my project. It meant thickening the lines and stretching it out a bit. When it was cut and pasted together in the way I wanted it, it looked like this:

For this project, I'm doing it in the way of some of the stained glass quilts I've made. It needed to be traced onto some Heat 'n Bond...

and then fused to some black fabric. Sadie helped with this.

While we watched the news, I cut out those skinny lines. When it was all cut out, I had what was essentially a pile of spaghetti.

Then, I peeled off the backing and fused it to the fabric. I wanted that bright yellow right behind the sun.

Okay, and that was as far as I got with it. I'm going to need to circle it a bit to figure out if it's ready for quilting and binding, or if it needs something else to happen. So far, so good, and even after all that skinny cutting, my project and I are still friends.

Speaking of friends, there was no progress on the When Quilters Gather block yesterday. It was just as well to take a day off from it.

Probably I'll focus on getting it finished before doing anything more to the challenge piece, but you know how it is if inspiration strikes. I'm going to give myself plenty of flexibility working with these two pieces simultaneously. I'd like to finish the block I've started, and so I'll work on that until I can't stand it any more. 

There are some other things on today's agenda. For one, I'm starting a pot roast early this afternoon. All this cold weather left me with a yen for something rib-sticking. Probably, I should do a little housework. For sure, I want to get in a Bow-flex workout today.

Despite rain most of the night, there are still patches of snow outside. We're hoping it will all be gone soon. Until then, we'll just continue staying inside, warm and dry. Our trip south can't come soon enough. Speaking of things that can't happen soon enough, the carpet installation was supposed to happen today. Instead, it will be a week from today. The only good thing I can say about it is that the delays haven't been too long.

Hopefully, y'all are thawing along with us. It's been good sewing weather, hasn't it?