January Doings

January has brought fierce winds, a nor'easter that dumped  around16 inches of snow here, and after a one day thaw, we're back in deep frigid bleak mid-winter. The temperature this morning was -19F and as I write this it is -8 degrees.  Our year-old Sammy cat is outside at the moment, worrisome to be sure, but he's become the little terrorist if we try to restrain him from going outdoors.  Hopefully he is in the barn where there is a small heat lamp over his "camping out" bed.  He's quite the adventurer, yesterday we caught him stalking a couple deer who like to visit the bird feeders near the barn.  Quite a sight as they all took off running, Sammy gave up the chase when he saw those long legs a-leaping!

On the quilting front, the year started lazily and I decided to attack the baggies and swiffer boxes of scraps in an attempt to clear some of the excess clutter around here.  Happy to say my January mini was finished early last week, and will be posted closer to the end of the month.  Then I tackled another bag of mostly 2-1/2 inch scrappy pieces most of which were leftovers from the Marrakesh quilt of a few years back.  I ended up with three placemats and two smaller hot dish or mug-rug flimsies, to hopefully all be quilted soon.  I'm planning to raid my orphan block box for backings for all of these, the plan being to use up as many of those oddballs as possible this year.

Another project I'd begun last year at quilt ministry was this one, which I quickly discovered would never work out in that venue due to space limitations and the constant interruptions that happen there. Anyway I'd hoped to make some progress building additional slabs this month, since sidetracked.

In the meantime, we learned last week that a family who had attended our little church lost their home and everything but the clothes they were wearing in a fire.  No insurance, sadly, which is often the case in this area.  The grandparents have two adult grandchildren plus another non-family member living with them.  Our little quilt group which has shrunk drastically in these covid times is busy working on making some quilts.  We had only one to immediately give to the family, but hopefully within the next couple weeks there will be four more.  This is the one I've been working on for the past week and a half, now a completed flimsy.   The blue and gray fabrics are a layer cake that I'd picked up a couple years ago.  A bit disappointing to have so many of the fabrics in the light range, I'd hoped for more dark to better achieve the diagonal gradation of color in the hatchet blocks.  The pinks are all scraps from the stash.  Here's how it looked in the semi-final layout before sewing blocks together.

And the completed top:

I used up all but a couple tiny scraps of the backing fabric from Lady Sings the Blues for the border. The top measures 59x74 inches.

Barring another snowstorm I'd like to get this pin-basted at next Tuesday's quilt ministry meeting, along with another top that was completed last fall, the red and white log cabin quilt.  They will both be simply machine quilted and bound and hopefully out the door to the family in a couple weeks.  

I guess that will more than take us into February!  And I thought I might just ease into the new year ...

But it's all good, quilting a red and white quilt in early February sounds just about right.