Feelin' the Blues

Much has transpired since my last post. We made the difficult decision to send Luna over the rainbow bridge. We never knew just how old she was as she was a rescue from one of our local shelters. She'd been with us for about seven and a half years if my reckoning is accurate. The first time our vet saw her he guessed her to be about four years old. At a later visit he revised his opinion of her age, thinking she might have been a bit older. Between that, and no hope of the seizures abating, it just seemed the best thing for her. Needless to say, I have felt her absence keenly. It didn't help that her last trip to the vet was on the day before my birthday. Fortunately, my SIL sent me a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle as a birthday gift. I hadn't done any puzzles for a long time but I do enjoy them. This one was rather daunting.

The colors and the subject matter appealed to me, as my SIL knew they would. 🙂 Working on this provided just the distraction I needed in the days after Luna's passing.

I have also been sewing. The annual fundraising auction for our local hospice organization will be held in September. I figured there was time to get a quilt made to put into the auction and settled on a blue and white color scheme. I chose a block design I hadn't made previously - but it's only a slight variation on a Bear's Paw block. It's called Doves in my block book. So far I haven't found another name for it. 

I don't really see doves, but then, how many traditional pieced blocks actually represent the things they were named after?  My original plan was to make 16 blocks and sash and border them for a square quilt. 

However, when I finally had 16 blocks made I didn't have enough of the white-on-white fabric I'd been using for background patches to go that far. Also, there were a few blocks that didn't seem to fit in well with the others.

Even culling the collection to 12 blocks didn't leave me with enough of the WoW to put a frame around the flimsy.

I searched and searched for more of that specific print and finally found it through Amazon.com of all places. There was no information as to manufacturer or designer on the selvedges. I had to buy 108" wide backing fabric to get the print I wanted. This project will be set aside while I wait for that yardage to be delivered.

There are other projects and plans in the works as well. Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things and post here a little more frequently in future. Let me offer my apologies to one and all for not following up on your kind comments lately. I do appreciate it when you leave comments. I just don't often have the psychic energy to respond to them. 💙

The Cream of the Crop!

Last night I was so jazzed by Apolo Anton Ohno and Julianne Hough winning "Dancing With the Stars" - as so rightly they should have! - that I couldn't go to sleep even though my body had been crying out for some shut-eye for hours. Instead I came up with a brilliant idea for a donation to the Hospice auction: "Hugs & Kisses for Hospice." I would make some more X's and O's, arrange them in a four-patch, build them up Log Cabin style if necessary, and make one or two pillows out of them. I could see it in bright happy colors, a la Sassenach's quilt for her daughter. It would be quick and fun and easily machine quilted (which, for some reason, I was now willing to do). Got out of bed to jot down these ideas and make a note to buy more fiberfill and then was able to go to sleep finally.

This morning I had the good sense to call Hospice to find out whether there was still time to make a donation to this year's auction. What do you think the answer was? Yup, I missed it by one day. They sent the program to the printer yesterday. Chalk up another one for Procrastination! Unless I use this as an opportunity to get a headstart on next year's donation... Any bets as to whether I'll follow through on this opportunity? ;- )

So the silk heart block can be put aside for the time being. I found a black paisley tone-on-tone cotton print in my stash that I like with the silks. I could use it to frame or border the block. I have also been thinking I might make three more blocks out of ties, use the cotton to sash (and stabilize) them, and make a wall hanging. We'll see. There's no hurry now. It also occurred to me to use this block as a learning experience and keep the next silk tie effort smaller. Maybe even piece onto a foundation. (I wasn't thinking clearly when I started sewing yesterday or I probably would have pieced onto a foundation. I was just working to distract myself from my physical discomfort.)

I have added a leaf to the vine on Vivian's round robin block. There was an empty spot I just couldn't live with. I had originally left it empty in an attempt to leave room for someone else to bead the nearby seams. I must not have been thinking straight then either. (This is a distressing pattern I see developing!)

DS#2 is frantically working to finish the details on a Star Wars costume replica for his brother who is flying up from Arizona tonight. To that end we made a trip to our local thrift shops yesterday afternoon to look for potential "tools" or whatever goes on the belt that Han Solo wears in the original trilogy of movies. He didn't find anything, but I did! It's the darling little cream pitcher you see in the picture at the top of the page. They had five teacups, without their saucers, and this pitcher. The teacups are what caught my eye. They were such a pretty shape. But I gave away nearly all of my teacups a couple of years ago and these didn't have saucers. That's when I noticed the creamer. Not the prettiest shape, relative to some others I own, but the print won me over. So much so that I paid more for it than I thought was reasonable. (Couldn't have been too unreasonable as I did pay for it afterall!) I went home a happy camper. And then Apolo and Julianne won. It was a great night!