Meanwhile, if you are missing an orange cat, it may be over here. The day I moved in (over 5 years ago) there was an evil mostly black cat that insisted this was his territory. Recently when I was out working in the garden, he stared at me and sprayed the shed, making the same point. (Now we know why he is outside all the time.) And then there is the pitiful white cat that was hanging out under the front window...unable to stir my cats from their heated beds. And finally the newest cat...an orange fellow...marched along the fence and glared at me.
Meanwhile, I have been spending time cleaning up the backyard garden. I admit to neglecting it when it transitioned from a shade garden to a very sunny and sometimes overly hot garden. And with a strong nod toward metaphor, most of the plants/weeds that I am trying to clear out are loaded with thorns: blackberries, holly, thistle and a couple out of control roses. To prove the point, there was a baby thorned honey locust...that I had to look up because I have never seen a sapling with such evil intent. When I went inside to tell my cats, they just chewed on their claws with their fangs.
And I have to apologize because I have been referring to these as microspools when they are a whopping 1.5 inches finished. Definitely not worthy of the term micro. In his book The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green begins his chapter on Viral Meningitis: "I find it difficult to grasp the size of viruses. As individuals, they are tiny. A red blood cell is about a thousand times bigger than a Sars COV-2 virus. But as a group, viruses are unfathomably numerous, There are about ten million viruses in a single drop of sea water."
If you would like to see some real micro quilting, please enjoy Alex Anderson's interview with Amy Pabst on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM-KATsG22g
I was inspired by hers and started mine...and while she had 365 blocks one year later, I had two. I decided to add to mine today and I was so productive I had an eight fold increase in blocks.
These are made with a 2.5 inch square surrounded by 1.25 inch strips.
When I moved to Mastodon this week, I found This is Colossal there and they linked me to @jeremymayer@mastodon.art. And if you would like to see a hard working cat, here you go: https://mastodon.art/@jeremymayer/109325920702829818
And here's the link to his website: https://jeremymayer.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=18688&Akey=23SVCF6T&ajx=1
These are the single spools still looking for a friend.
In other news, Sheepish (the sheep quilt) won second place, viewers' choice (in its category) at the Clark County Quilt Show. I told the sheep it did not beHOOF them to BrAAAAg, but they all pretended not to hear me. (If you suspect that a pickle dish quilt won first prize in the same category, you would be right.)
Buddy worries that I will ask him to start thinking blog posts again when what he really wants to do is work on the launch of his Purring Podcast.
Some days just disappear. You realize the highlight of the day was Buddy playing with his Flurff...a butterfly attached to a spinning disk. However, maybe some jokes were made at Buddy's expense so he rejects my request for a photo recreating the scene.
But some times, apologies and bribes are made and accepted.
In case it wasn't obvious, I am using animals as the theme. Here are some earlier cuts, plus some of the hexies I have already based on the paper. Revisiting this project, I realize that I have lots of cut hexies and not enough sewn. We are having a windy night, so this will be the perfect project if we lose power.
I have been culling pairs without enough contrast and plan to recycle them back into the project. However, I already have 900 pairs. I had started to sort them by the color of the darkest spool, but while I was sleeping, Buddy unsorted them. He also dropped his possum toy on top of the pile so I wouldn't know who was to blame. (Sometimes I will find possum at the food dish, sometimes he comes to the bedroom, then back to the sewing room).
Here are the four-patches I have made so far. As a reminder, the key challenge to this quilt is that it is a charm quilt, where each spool is made from a different fabric. Unfortunately, as I was sorting pairs, I found a duplicate fabric!!!! This means my strategy for removing duplicates was not foolproof and my only remedy is to pack this project away and never think of it again.
Buddy focused only on my blogging role. He recommended I provide less words and pictures but more thinking.
Today, I only unsewed some spools so I will have to supplement this post with more quilts from the Clark County Quilters show...moving now to improv.
Here is the description.
This was an interesting spin on a familiar format.
And the description.
This quilt received three ribbons, and it stood out for its original design. Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of the description. The quilt guild did take photos of the entire show and have made the images available on a flash drive. So hopefully it will include this quilts' description. I also didn't take a picture of the overall winner...it was a "realistic" fused scene with a dragon.
