Last one on the right

Meet Emmie, short for Emerelda Von Mossington.

One more to go

Meet Mr. Buttons (no relation to Mr. Muttons).

Sewing Saturday

I coaxed all of the sheep up on the design wall, and chose the obvious layout: The PartisanSheep Divide. To use this layout, however, I need to make three right-leaning sheep and five left-leaning sheep. And now that this fellow is finished, I only need to make two right-leaning sheep.

And these are the last of the pinwheels I needed to finish up my "Chantal's Pinwheel." And if I am super lucky, I will be able to post this on the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. I think I have finally figured out why I have had trouble with links and comments.

And yes, Molly has forgiven me for forgetting that you can't demote the center of the universe. I think she was feeling sorry for me so she let me watch bird videos with her on youtube. Buddy came along and was washing her face. Then he grabbed her ear in his mouth and tugged...and Molly squeaked. Combined with chewing on computer cords, he is doubly demoted.

Buddy says he can't help it, because he likes spicy food.

Cat Competition

The last time I laid this quilt out I realized I was missing a couple of blocks. I also decided that I didn't want to lay out the smaller blocks, so I put four blocks into diamonds. I just tried to have a hot, bright triangle and a dark triangle in each set of blocks. Then when I laid these out, I discovered I was missing two large blocks. Buddy explained that really it had been 4 by 5 and now I was trying to make it 5 by 5, so I really have extra blocks. (And I discovered that Julie K is putting her Chantal Pinwheel quilt together too.)

Here is Molly. She is either reflecting on the loss of her squirrel, disappointed with my incompetence, or tired of me taking her photo.

Buddy was an excellent sport, so I demoted Molly to least beloved kitten in this household, and made Buddy my favorite. Then Buddy started chewing on a computer cord and I demoted him so that he is tied with Molly. Tomorrow is another day.

Ostriches

Remember the ostriches? I had made five rows of ostriches.

And now they are connected. I will probably give it a bit of a border using the background fabric...then decide whether to bind with gray or background.

And yesterday I had a bit of excitement. I heard a pop and then the power went out. I checked the electric company outage map and it mentioned that 93 people in my area were out of power. The cause was under investigation with an estimate that the power would be restored within a couple of hours. Happily, I had already prepared my coffee, so no problem.

Then it slowly came to me that 93 houses isn't that big of an area which meant the problem was probably close by. And yes it was...right in my driveway. So rather than continue to check online, I went out into real life. Scary, I know. Because these trees were trimmed within the last few months, it is likely that there was some intermediary involvement. The electric company blamed a squirrel, but Molly will not believe it until she gets to inspect the evidence.

Blue Scrappy Star Quilt Top

I made a red version of this string diamond last year and you can find the blog post here including a link to the inspiration quilt at the Mingei Museum. I made enough of the string diamonds to make two quilts. And yes, if you look very closely at the bottom left corner of the quilt, you will see that there are disruptive forces in my sewing room that make it hard to hang quilts straight...or do anything really.

Here is another view of the disruptive force, this time contained within an orb that used to be a bed for Molly. Molly now refers to it as "An Orb within an Orb."

Ostrich Formation

It took me way too long to get to this point. Admittedly, ostriches ask a lot of stupid questions, but that wasn't the problem. I started these guys back in Virginia and have uncovered them many times. At one point, I had the fabric that I was using all together. Then the fabric was refiled when I decided not to make this quilt. Then I changed my mind. Again. I found all of the fabric except the dark gray fabric...and I had bits and pieces, but not enough to add a fifth row. Long story longer, I had pulled the dark gray fabric out to audition it for sheep. (Don't judge...some sheep like to dress up in ostrich feathers...and that's their choice).

Anyway, I'm going to have these maniacal birds staring at me until they tell me what I need to do next.

Digging Out

I guess if you start digging, you should expect to find an ostrich head or two. I also found three cows that had wondered off. I wasn't looking for it...but I also found Buddy's self-portrait.

I started moving quilts out of a cedar closet to give them a better home in the hall closet, and that meant digging stuff out of the hall closet. I found a tub that had lots of chickens, monkeys and singletons of a vulture, eagle, flamingo, raccoon, finch, blue jay etc. These had gotten separated from a bin of other experiments and works in progress.

In any case, I know I have pulled the ostriches out a couple of times now trying to remember what I had planned for them. If I make them into totem poles with a connector between the neck and the top of the head, the background would make a nice geometric.

And here is another explanation about the Frolic (Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt for 2019) colors...the paint chips looked blue but Bonnie's fabric selection looked shaded to the purple with a couple of selections heading toward violet. I went to Lowe's to get the paint cards because I thought my monitor could be off. And yes, I could find paint cards in many versions of blue, and those two versions of violet (far right), but there wasn't a paint card for purple or blue-purple (like the hydrangeas).  Apparently Sherwin Williams does not sell paint to unicorns.

Frolic Fabric

So here is where I landed for my Bonnie Hunter Frolic fabric selection. Or maybe I should say my selection of hue...the fabric selection is an ongoing process. I did go to Lowe's and pick up paint chips because I got a bit confused that Bonnie's paint card looked navy, but her fabric selection appeared purple. When I was looking at the paint display at Lowe's though, I realized that if you want to paint your room purple, Sherwin Williams is looking out for you and is offering you every color but purple.

That was a diversion, however, so I explored other clues. Based on the yardage, the blue/purple and fuchsia are the main colors with green and aqua and light blue as accents. One third of the quilt is white, one third accents, and one third the key colors. Fascinating, but another diversion.

Going to the color wheel, the choice this year isn't an obvious color harmony, but I still mimicked Bonnie's choice. As I took a turn around the color wheel I was looking for two of the key colors that I would most want to work with...which brought me to bright blue and lime green. Yes, when I was in high school my mother let me decorate my room...and true to the 60s, I picked a lime green shag rug and bright blue curtains.

Still following Bonnie's color harmony, I moved around the color wheel to the corresponding accent colors...gold/butterscotch and orange.

My other big decision was to use Kaffe fabrics as much as possible, because that will make the process a lot more enjoyable. Last year my choices were very static--almost solids--and yikes, I went down in flames.

And I know that you are seeing the major omission in my choices so far...where's the cat fabric? One year, Bonnie admitted that every mystery quilt has some cat fabric, so that is certainly one rule I always adhere to.

Unfortunately, Molly was trying to enjoy her heated bed and did not want to deal with any of my nonsense...especially taking her picture. And yes, last night as trick or treaters came to the door and rang the doorbell, she sat in her bed and took it all in. Buddy would run off and hide.

Buddy has been enjoying Molly's other bed. He runs inside, attacks the inside and then races away.