Baby, it's cold outside!

The news said it was 5 degrees, but my car said it is a balmy 10. I finally found my polar fleece ear band so my ears were nice and toasty taking out the trash this morning.

I managed to get more strips of my Dutch wax fabric cut last evening. The stack is growing and will be ready for a weekend of sewing.



I had a friend of a friend stop by last evening with some alterations. It consists of hemming pants and hemming jacket sleeves. I could use the extra cash in case I decide I want to go on a bus trip to the International Quilt Festival in Cincinnati in April. A quilt shop in Kent, Ohio is sponsoring a bus. We would stop at several quilt shops on the way down on Friday, Saturday would be the Festival, and Sunday we would stop at the Fabric Shack in Waynesville on the way back (I have heade great things about this shop). The price includes the bus, ticket to the festival, and hotel. I would like to find a roommate so the cost would be $235.00. Should I go?

Dutch wax and snow

I got a few strips and squares cut out of my Dutch wax fabric for making the block shown in the picture.


Here are the rest of my Dutch wax prints I need to cut strips from.



I think the name of this tree is a Serviceberry. They look so pretty with the white snow against the bright red berries. There are six of these in a traffic island in the parking lot at work. I just had to take some pictures of them with the fresh snow on them. I had about 3/4" of heavy wet snow in the driveway when I got home after work last night - which I shoveled - and this morning there was 2" of light fluffy stuff. It is still snowing, but it seems to have slowed down.

You remember these strips of scraps that I showed last week? Well I worked on them this weekend and turn them into ...


these patches.


I ended up with 534 patches and I have just touch the tip of the scrap iceberg! I am thinking that I may use some of these to make the family xmas quilt for 2011. The box I had to store these patches in is already full. I guess I need a bigger box!

Getting ready for a weekend of sewing

I got the pieces and partial blocks dug out of the box and organized so now I can see what I need. I need to cut a bunch of strips from the fabric I have already been using and then intergrate into those fabrics strips and squares the fabric I bought 13 months ago at St. Theresa's Textile Trove. The other job I still need to finish is sewing up those scrap stripes to the Kona snow strips and cut those into patches. I have an appointment to get a perm tomorrow morning and a baby shower to attend on Sunday afternoon which will cut into my sewing time. I think I will use those times as my breaktime and not waste anytime taking a break while I am in the studio.

Have a warm, safe, and productive weekend!

Need some color

With all this cold drab weather I need some color to perk up my attitude. I dug out these blocks. I had made several quilts with my Dutch Wax fabrics and these blocks are still waiting to go into a piece. I am getting to the end of my dutch wax prints that I orginally used so I need to cut more strips out of the fabric I bought 13 months ago (I can't believe it had been that long already) and mix them with the older prints. Sounds like I have a project for the weekend.

Crusty

I first have to say how lucky I am - I still have electricity and the ice was not as bad as predicted. The roads into work today were better than yesterday. The cul-de-sac I live on is another story. I couldn't make it up the slight grade the first time, or the second, or the third. I would make it so far then I would have to back up 5 or 6 feet and try again. I slowly inched up and made it to the flat circle about the sixth try while my neighbor, who was outside watched me! All I needed was a little push and I would have easily gotten up the grade. He had gotten stuck there in the morning on his way to work. He said "Oh, it looked like you would make it eventually." I was so pissed! I wanted to say "How would you feel if it was a family member of yours and that someone just watched them struggle when you could have helped?!" After I got to the house, I got the shovel and proceeded to walk back to the spot that gave me trouble and started to shovel the street while I was swearing at the city of Akron, Ohio for not touching the street for the last 3 weeks. I started sliding around this morning (the snow and yuck must be at least 6" deep) when I was coming down the grade this morning, but I made it ok. It is hard to get a good photo of ice, but here is the driveway and the ice covered snow. The ice had already started to melt because the temperature is in the low 40's until noon today when it drops into the 20's.



Here I stuck my foot into the snow just to see how thick the ice was - crusty!

What a mess

Shoveling this morning was like shoveling sand. Yes, that is exactly what the 1.5 - 2" of snow that landed felt like. It was the weirdest snow I had ever seen. I would hear it thru the night hitting the windows. It took me 25 minutes to get to work and I only had to go 3.4 miles, but the streets were total crap. I had one small hill that I almost didn't make it up. We have company meeting today that is 15 miles away and I am not going. All the schools are closed and we are just sitting and waiting for the freezing rain that is suppose to be happen on and off today and all day tomorrow. Fun times!

When I was cleaning up scraps this past weekend I found this silk pincushion that was not finished. I went ahead and did some hand quilting on it and put it together. It will make a nice gift in a pinch.