Old blocks................

While I was in the basement doing laundry I started looking for a bag of crooked cobblestones.  Since I have emptied 4 project boxes so far this month I thought I should continue looking for blocks already made in past years.

In the bag were all of these separate bags of crooked cobblestones that are measured and packaged by width.  On the sidebar of this blog is a photo of a Crooked Cobblestone wall hanging, the first one that I made.  Here is a post when I was sorting them by size, 2016.  They have been waiting a long time to be used.  I have a label Cobblestone Series in the label list on the right side bar with 79 posts in it if you are interested in any more info.

I hand stitched half of a short side on the pineapple log cabin quilt binding so now I am officially half done.

Still hand stitching.......................

Not a lot of time was spent on the hand stitching yesterday but I do have one long side and half of a short side stitched.  I may take a break from it this morning and trim the second quilt and choose a binding for it.

The red double Amaryllis has one open flower now.  There are only going to be three blooms on this one.

There is hope for more blooms though because there are more bud stalks on this bulb.  The third one is still pretty short but they grow pretty fast.

My internet provider sent me a new modem and said I hook it up myself.  At 83 I think someone should be helping me......

Well, anyway I got it hooked up in a half hour and spent another half hour trying to get my computer and phone to hook up with it.  I finally called for help.  The automated lady wouldn't give me to an agent for help for over 15 minutes.  The agent spent almost a half hour helping me and finally we got it connected.  Now I have to go through the process of sending back the old modem.  Luckily there is a choice of having it picked up at my house.  I just have to be sure I click on the right thing on the website to get my label and pick up time.

Possible freezing rain today and early tomorrow.  My son and daughter-in-law picked up some groceries for me yesterday so I won't need to leave home.  I filled the birdfeeders yesterday too so I won't have to go out in the rain.

Binding started.................

This is the binding fabric I chose for the batik pineapple log cabin quilt.

I got it sewn onto the quilt and started the hand stitching.  I started at the middle of a short side and made it past the first corner.

I do my hand stitching in my studio because I have excellent bright light in there.  I pile the quilt on my cabinet and on the 3 drawer chest that I can pull out from under the left side of the cabinet.  Then I just scoot forward in my chair on wheels and start stitching.  I can easily get up and leave the area without moving the quilt.

These are the only cactus blooms and no buds on any of the other plants.

The tall Amaryllis with the white flowers edged with red has another bud opening and will bloom soon.  The third Amaryllis that was gifted to me is starting to open too.  It is suppose to be a double flower.  There are 2 more bud stalks on that bulb, one that is about half as tall as the one that is blooming and another about 3" tall.

Trimming.............

I got 2 quilts back from my longarm quilter and they are 2 favorite quilts.  I got this one trimmed so it is ready for me to choose binding.  It is all batik fabric so it will be a batik binding and will be hand finished.

There are lots of colors in this quilt so almost any binding color will work.

The back is a batik too.  I think I will look for a medium value for the binding since there is a light end and a dark end to the layout of the blocks.

I finished pressing another huge backing and trimmed a piece of batting to size so I could send 2 more with my longarmer.

I tried a new die yesterday.  I haven't pressed these 6" blocks yet.

I just cut a lot of batik scraps for the trial sewing.  Batik is not the easiest to sew curved seams in so my real project will not be batik.

The die cuts little notches that match up at the center point on all of the pieces.

Last night I finished the denim blue dishcloth and the black and white one was finished last week.

I have 2 more in progress.  They will be smaller because there wasn't as much yarn remaining for either one.

Since I had an empty needle I started another one, a new color that I found.  It is pink and 2 shades of grayish green.  I like to knit while I watch the 10 p.m. news because it is so relaxing.

Weather news: we were back below zero last night and it won't get much above 10 today.  The warmup starts Monday. 

All rows sewn...............

I tried to straighten the rows many times but they still ended up on a slant.  The good news though is that all of the rows are sewn.  I put a few gold triangles in the spots at the right side but still am not sure how I will finish this.  It may linger on the design wall for a few days...  I think maybe it needs dark triangles and maybe a border.

For the last 2 days I have been working on batting and backings for 2 more quilts to send out for quilting.  The pattern for this quilt is on this post.  Here is the top when I finished it.  I bought the zebra batik backing fabric on sale in NC in August 2018.

I did some grocery shopping yesterday while it was around 17 degrees. Today we will struggle to get to 8 degrees in the afternoon.  It started snowing last night before 10 p.m. and it is predicted to be light and fluffy snow and they say about 1.5" -2" for my area.

Still sewing diagonal rows.................

3 more rows sewn, 5 to go and the best part is each row from here on is shorter as I work toward the bottom left corner.  I haven't made any decision for the color of the outside triangles.

It got up to 18 degrees yesterday so I put on my boots and went out and filled the birdfeeders.  Crunch, crunch through the deep snow that had freezing rain on it twice and froze and then fluffy snow on top.  It's going to take a lot of warm days to melt all of that snow.

Figuring it out as I work...............

I cut more gold/yellow/orange triangles and placed some on the design wall.  Then I decided to sew the corner row together.

Three more rows were sewn together as I tried to decide what color the edge triangles will be.  And, what size the triangles should be.  I could put 2 half square triangles which would be easy to figure out but I would rather add one quarter square triangle.  

We finally got up to 0 yesterday afternoon and it stayed at 0 all the way to 11 p.m.  I didn't check again after that.  It was -9 when I got up and -5 when I left for a pacemaker check at our local clinic.  I was worried the parking lot might be slippery but it was all cleaned off and dry.  I have an estimated 15 months left on the battery life in my pacemaker.

I had to get one photo of Jack Frost's work before it melts.  We are going to be all the way up to 40 degrees next week, from -15 to 40, quite a swing in temperatures.  First though we have a chance of more snow twice this week.