Frigid

Good morning, my friends. The weather is a balmy 13°F this morning. About half an hour ago, sleet began to fall. I'm afraid we're in for a miserable couple of days here at the Three Cats Ranch. That said, we're probably no worse than much of the country.

It was cold yesterday, but nothing like today. We watched as the temperature dropped hour by hour until it was 19°F by the time we went to bed. Mike has diligently gone all around the house plugging our leaky windows with scraps of batting. In windy weather, air seeps in where they slide open. 

So, okay. A cold day calls for some baking, don't you think? We had leftover split pea soup for dinner last night, and I wanted a little something to go with it. I tried this recipe for The Shipyard Galley's Zucchini Muffins. The Shipyard Galley is a restaurant in Massachusetts, but the recipe came from King Arthur Flour.

Mike wanted to eat one right away when they came from the oven. Here's how they look inside.

They're so yummy. I'll definitely be making them again. I used some frozen shredded zucchini from last summer's harvest, and I used golden raisins in mine. They also contain chopped walnuts. They have the nicest texture and a good hit of cinnamon. 

It was mid-afternoon before I was at a place I could start working on the French Roses quilt. Here's my current situation. At the far end of the table is where I'm sitting right now with my laptop computer. I have a space heater there too. With windows on two sides, it's a bit of a chilly corner in the mornings. The heater keeps me nice and toasty. 

Before I laid the quilt out, I needed something to protect the dining room table. My mother gave me this folding cardboard cutting board when I was a teenager. It gives a nice place for spreading out fabric for cutting. When I did garment sewing in my younger years, I cut many a pattern on this cutting board. When Mike and I were first married, I was heavily into crocheting. I worked during the day while he went to school, and he worked in a mall florist shop in the evenings. I learned to crochet to pass the time in the evenings, and you might say I got hooked. (Pun totally intended.) And all of that to say that I used to block my crocheted creations using this board. Fast forward to the present, and it makes a great way to protect the table from my poking needle.

For this project, I'm using a darning needle. It has a large enough eye to accommodate my thread. Also, I'm using a chalk marker.

Happily, I found two balls of this off-white Knit-Cro-Sheen, which will be just what I need for this project.

My quilt is 60 x 60 inches square, and so I can start wherever I want to with the tying. After considering different configurations, I decided to sit at the side of the table so I can see out the window. Not a bad view.

As I was getting started, Smitty was just waking up from a nap.

This is clearly a task requiring his assistance, and so he got up close and personal for a better look.

After sizing things up, he settled in for the long haul.

If you've never tied a quilt before, it's pretty easy. And it's not exactly rocket science, but having someone show you how to do it helps with the simplest of tasks. If you want to see my method, I wrote a little tutorial some time ago. This quilt is spray basted, and so there's no need for pins this time around.

These measurements are for my own reference. I studied the quilt for some time trying to figure out a pattern for the ties. I ended up putting one in every other 3-inch patch for the pieced inner border. And then I wanted a row in the outer border. I decided the borders and blocks could have different patterns. For the outer border, I positioned them 1.5 inches from the edge of the pieced border, and then 6 inches apart.

When those two rows were finished, it looked like this. 

Before starting this, I was thinking the outer edge would be clipped and ragged. When I took the quilt off the to-be-quilted pile, I realized I'd already cut binding strips, and so it'll be bound in the traditional way. Knowing there will be a seam around the outer edge means this is enough tying for the borders. Looking at the quilt back, it was hard to find the little stitches. When it's all done, there's a nice little pucker at each stitch.

I didn't do any more on this, but I decided how to tie the rows of blocks. I'll put one tie at the center 4.5 inches from the corner.

And then I'll do one at each of the four corners, measuring 2.25 inches from the intersecting seams.

 

The thick flannel and batting coupled with two strands of Knit-Cro-Sheen can make this a hand killer. It's hard to pull that big-eyed needle through all that bulk. For that, I have this little rubber disk. It gives me a good grip on the needle and makes this task a little easier on the hands.

There are five rows of blocks on this quilt. My goal is to stitch three rows of ties each day (one row of blocks). If I can do that, I should have this ready for binding within a week's time. And, of course, that won't take all day. 

For the rest of my sewing day, I'm going to start sewing together the Domestic Affairs quilt into a finished quilt top. Here are the blocks I have for this quilt:

Up until just this moment, I've given almost no thought to how I'm going to sew this together. This was a free BOM from Jenny of Elefantz, and she provided just the blocks. There are no instructions for sewing it all together, and so the sky's the limit on what I can do. What I can do will probably depend on the fabrics I find in my stash. I'm not even sure I have anything appropriate, but I'm going to find out today. I'll say more about this after I've given it more thought and investigated my stash holdings.

Okay, so I can hear ice crystals pelting the windows as I'm writing this. It's going to be a brutal couple of days weather-wise. The carpeting folks called yesterday to inquire how preparation was going at this end. At the conclusion of the conversation, we ended up rescheduling to a week from Monday. Hopefully, all this white stuff will be gone by then. We're both actually kind of happy about a reprieve from the emptying and clearing we've done. There's still much to do, but now we have a little more time in which to do it.

How're you holding up at your end? Hopefully, the weather is treating you better where you are, although I'm fairly certain the entire country is in the grip of these cold temperatures. Bundle up, my friends.