The blue mouse did fancy the pink one after all, and now I have a mouse explosion in my sewing room. I should have read the fine print about participating in a rainbow scrap challenge. Apparently everyone saw this coming except me.

Tommy has been holding staff meetings away from the sewing room, so I had no clue what was going on in there. I saw some purple bits all over and he's an excellent mouser, but I think this has gotten beyond his control.

Look who showed up out of the blue! Tommy, however, doesn't like how blue mouse is looking at pink mouse.  He thinks we may be heading toward trouble.

After the unexpected demise of the blue cranes, Tommy suggested I switch to mice. According to him, mice are a lot faster and don't just hang around like sitting ducks, so to speak. He suggested I make it big and juicy.  The finished block is 12 by 14 inches but seems to be on the dry side. And he's pink because that's the color for the month of February in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014.

Tommy looks very trustworthy to me...

A bow-tie quilt top from the 1980's. I'm trying to figure if I should keep it small and finish it off simply, or grow it by adding new and different bow-ties, or fold it up and store it away for a few more decades.

Here's another old quilt I made in 1986, called "New Wave Bow-tie." It's my thirteenth finished quilt. I think this was about the last quilt I hand quilted. Also, it has a wool batting that had just become available commercially. When I was "working" at Crazy Ladies and Friends quilt store, a customer came in and was describing what she said was "The ugliest quilt ever made." And this was it! I laughed and said "I made that." Another complaint about this quilt was that all of the palm trees in the peach bow-ties are facing up.

 

And here's my other activity of the day besides shoveling snow. I used the Hoffman California purple angel fish (#3) as the backing to the Ocean Wave quilt I showed a few posts back. I was looking for the blue colorway for that fabric that I was convinced I still had. I found it in yellow (#1) and pink (#2). At the time these were considered shockingly bright. They were also called batiks except they are printed with fake crack lines that wax would make in a real batik fabric. 

I was certain #4 was the blue colorway except it has different fish. Then there is #6 which has angel fish, but in a different style and with two colors. And #5 is more of the color I remembered as the blue colorway, and although it is also in the same Hoffman California fabric line, the palm trees are definitely not angel fish.

Here are the cranes I made for today's rainbow challenge at So Scrappy. Yesterday, I mentioned that I am making these in an attempt to lure away Mystic Quilter's cats. We'll have to see how that goes. For the crane I showed yesterday, I added strips on the top and bottom to make the crane stand out better. But for the rest I will wait until I am ready to assemble the quilt top and then choose the water, I mean sashing.

So this is everything I have made so far. For each crane block I end up with 2 extra half-square triangles. I will assemble these as I go along as well. In this case I had some extras due to excess creativity (aka mistakes).

I was planning on just watching everyone jump into the new year with the scrappy challenge at SoScrappy. My mind was a blank. Until I saw the cats at Mystic Quilter. Then I was jealous. Then I decided I would try and lure those cats off of her quilt...so that meant birds or fish. I saw this swan used in a quilt in Quilts Japan #4. It looks like an origami crane to me. So that is what I'm going to use as a lure for those cats. Except just making this one about drove me crazy and took longer than I would ever admit to.

I didn't want to figure out how to make the beak (the crane's bill?) every time I made a block, so I decided to make the beaks all at once. I cut strips of the background fabric and marked the center of each 2 inch square (first photo). (This mark is upside down and is really the bottom of the beak). After marking, I cut the two inch squares from the strips. Then I set the squares on the yellow or orange scraps and sewed from my chalk mark to the corner (second photo).  Then I trimmed away the excess (photo 3). And now I have all the beaks I will need so I won't have to rethink that fussy bit each time. Now I have to go make some more blue cranes/swans to catch up with the challenge and link up tomorrow.

Here is the Placid Curves QOV post-rinse and wash. In my January 3 post, I was worried because one of the fabrics in the quilt proved to be an excellent dye catcher. When I tested some strips, the dye catching fabric turned pink. However, this time the quilt had 4 long soaks in a large tub with Dawn dishwashing soap. The rinse water turned primarily blue, so the dye catching fabric became a very pale blue.

Happily, the dye catching fabric added a consistent dull blue hue that looks planned and appropriate. And I am extremely happy that the fabric didn't turn pink, which would have ruined the quilt.

This is going to get a little embarrassing. When I began quilting, I only used solid fabrics and all the quilts were hand quilted. And most of the quilts were given away, so I don't own many of my earlier quilts. "Fishing Cats" is the earliest quilt I still own--it was finished in 1983 and was my seventh quilt.

  

While I still get a kick out of the individual fish, the layout leaves a lot to be desired--like some movement. And clearly the applique plant life at the bottom is struggling to survive.

The quilt is called Fishing Cats for the border of cats quilted along the edge. At the time, the fish in the backyard pond were mysteriously disappearing. The mystery was solved the day my cat came running inside stinky and soaking wet.

The MASSIVE cleanup that began with the sewing room has moved to the room where I store flat folds of fabric, weaving fiber and finished quilts. The quilt above was made in the 1980s, but apparently I had already stopped labeling quilts because this doesn't have one and I no longer remember its name. I do remember that I was "working" at Crazy Ladies and Friends quilt store at the time and Mary Ellen wanted an example of mirror blocks.

In other news, the Placid Curves QOV is enjoying its first 12 hour soak. Although I expected a particular red to run, the water has turned a beautiful inky blue, which means the QOV gets to enjoy a second 12 hour soak.

I finally got in a sewing groove and got all the blocks put together for the quilt of valor. And this one will get a soak BEFORE it's quilted. Except first I need to get into town to get some Dawn Free and Clear. Well, let me amend that. First, the paved part of the driveway needs to be free and clear of ice, and then I can go into town.

 

Here is the finished fractured quilt. I didn't get the binding on until this afternoon, hence the fractured shadows across the photograph. Below is a closeup of the machine quilting. I nixed the idea of a loopy line because it didn't seem to match the quilt, so I used an erratic straight line zig and zag instead. Thank you Vicki W. for hosting this fractured quilt-a-long, it was terrific fun!

 

The Placid Curves QOV is quilted and bound. I'm off to make the presentation case so I can send it to Alycia next week.

Quilt of Valor 2013

Here is my Quilt of Valor for January. I obviously have a new found fascination with trees that stand upright.

 Here is the back with label.

And here is a closeup of the handywork of Vicki W (and yes, you can order a custom quilt back from her too!).

A 64X72 inch post-stamp charm quilt. Postage stamp refers to one-inch finished squares, and charm quilt means no repeat fabrics. So this is definitely an object, and more crazy than design. I began putting this together over a year ago. I first proposed the project as a joke, but I couldn't stop once started. And now it is finally finished.


And to construct it I cut short 1.5 inch strips then sewed four of these together. Then I cut them to size and pieced larger and larger blocks. I wanted a random look but went with local decisions. That is, I only made decisions about what to put next to what based on the pieces I had before me. (The other alternative is to lay it out and rearrange the squares "globally".)