Bias

Bias bias bias bias bias.

That's what I have been fighting all afternoon.  My quest to finish all my UFOs brought me to the 60 degree sort-of log cabin blocks I started from a pattern on the Moda website.  The one I put away without completing.

The one that I now understand why I didn't complete.

Sheesh - is there another pattern out there with more bias?

Here's a wonky picture of the center with some of the rows still not joined.

See?  You can just imagine.

I hope that the border tames some of the stretchiness or my longarm quilter is gonna LOVE me.

There must be something in the water

I am impatiently awaiting my new issue of Quiltmaker magazine which contains the start of Bonnie Hunter's new mystery, Lazy Sunday.  The colors are pinks, purples, greens, blues/teals and neutrals.  At the same time, I just looked at the fabric requirements for Linda Hahn's new mystery at the American Quilter's Society website www.quiltviews.com.  The colors are - wait, pink, purple, green and blue/teal?

Hmmmmm.

What are the odds that the two mysteries that I want to do have the very same colors?  Admittedly, Linda Hahn's is going to be made of batiks, but still.   .   .

This is frustrating.

I have never made a pattern by Linda Hahn and thought I should use her colors for safety's sake.  I would be guaranteed that the contrast and coordination between the colors would work, after all.  At the same time I wanted to use Bonnie Hunter's colors because I had a lot of green, purple and teal left over from her free mystery Easy Street and liked the bright springiness of them. My husband prefers a lot of color in quilts and would appreciate it too.  Of course, I am using black as the neutral on Lazy Sunday instead of lights, which will, I think, change up the look, and Linda Hahn doesn't specify a neutral, so there will be differences.

I wonder what is going on in the color zeitgeist that made both choose the same color palette.  No red, no rust, no yellow, no gold, no brown, no tan.  I think everyone is looking forward to spring.  But, by the time these mysteries are completed it will be fall!

Gold it is.

I decided it needed a little lightness so I went with the gold outer border, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Now on to the next languishing project I uncovered during my sewing room straightening - a red and green small quilt. I am determined to finish up all these half-done UFOs that I found.  The terrible thing is, I had no idea there were so many!

Decisions, decisions. . .

which border shall I use?

I laid out the two possibilities and all day while house cleaning I kept stealing a peak at them trying to decide.

 Finally I mocked up the two possibilities in EQ and took another look.

Blue border:

Gold border:

Which one is best?  I can't decide but I think I'm leaning toward the gold.

The crazy cat people's house

I'm sure that's how we would be known if people saw all these cat accouterments.  We were fairly tame about the cat paraphernalia when we just had Molly, but after we added Tuxedo it sort of mushroomed.

First, we bought Molly a cube:

 She loved it until, well, she didn't.  One day it was good, and the next it was terrible.  Such is the judgment of cats.

She was getting older and felt the cold more, so we bought her a heated window perch:

Her perch is still her most valued possession and she spends a great part of the day on it, looking over my husband's shoulder as he works at his desk.  He is her favorite person and she loves to be close to him.  The proximity makes it easier to mooch, too.

When we adopted Tuxedo, I installed a perch in the garage window so he could watch the birds and squirrels:

Although mostly he uses it to sleep.  This perch became more important after I bought the Honda in August; prior to that he slept on top of my Subaru.  The roof of the Honda is not as conducive to sleeping, evidently.

When it got cold he also got a heated perch:

It's on the inside wall of the garage and up high where it's warmer.  I worry about him sleeping in the garage and try to make it as comfortable as possible.

Now, he also has a perch in my sewing room:

This way, when he's inside he can stay close to me, which is important in his world view.  Tuxie is sort of a one-person cat.  He has never sat in my husband's lap and tries to stay in the same room as I am.  If I sit down he invites himself into my lap, which is inconvenient when I'm sewing on the machine.  In fact, if he wants a lap sit while I'm at the machine, he jumps up on the sewing table and starts whacking and nipping at me until I scoot back and welcome him for a cuddle.  He doesn't have to sit there long;  it's kind of a checking-in maneuver, a little comforting for him.  Afterward, he wanders off to find a sunny spot to sleep.

There are also two scratching posts, one in the den and one in the living room, and a flurry of cat toys scattered about.

We've got the kitty cat fever really bad.  It only takes a minute or two in our house to tell.

Look what I found!

I was cleaning out some drawers in my sewing room this morning and look what I found - the EQ blog BOM for 2011 (yes, 2011 - blush!).  I never finished it.

There were 12 blocks but I found two extra I made (didn't like the colors in the first try evidently) so I made two more duplicates and laid out a 4 x 4 on point setting with some blue and yellow fabric, using a green stripe for the skinny inner border and bias binding.

I need to get this done soon - it matches my kitchen!

Another one done

Another one done, but terrible picture to show it off - I don't have a large enough space to hang up these king size quilts and my rooms aren't big enough to spread them on the floor and still be in the room to take the picture.

I debated adding a solid border outside the pieced one but finally just let it be.  It's interesting, to say the least, but I'm afraid it looks a bit unfinished.  Perhaps the green binding will give it some design closure.  I should have used the darker tan on all four edges but that would have meant making new X blocks for those edges with beige on one side and tan on three sides (instead of beige on two and tan on two), and I was running short of green and beige fabric. And picking out the end blocks on all eleven assembled rows, which I wasn't going to do.  It stands as it is.

And I finally got my Grandmother's Choice block for this week completed.  Foundation paper piecing, templates for cutting, curved piecing and applique.  She covered the bases on this one!

The crook in the handle should have been turned upward but I was working in mirror image and forgot to reverse it.  Don't tell!