Neutral Rainbow

Here are the purple bitcoin and 16-patches I had hoped to show for the last week of June for the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. Instead I decided to participate in the Portland Heat Dome Challenge. 

The sewing room was off limits because it was outside of our "cool zone" where cool is less than 90 degrees. So instead of patchwork, I can offer photos of my garden where the rhododendrons are exploring browns for July. They were not happy to lose all of their tree shade from the ice storm and now think life is not worth living at 114 degrees F.

Also brown and not happy. 

Meanwhile the interior of the house has been infected with the dreaded pestilence of bedbugs. But still a suitable tribute to neutrals.

Heat Dome

 One might think that I got a bit overheated in anticipation of the high temperatures that we are expecting this weekend. But I live under a heat dome most of the time, but I just call him Buddy.

Instead, this cat is 12 inches square and I made him for this year's SAQA auction, one of their annual fund raising efforts. He's made almost entirely by hand except for the paper pieced front legs/clown collar, the background and the facing (instead of a binding).  And surprisingly, I finished him a full 5 days before the submission deadline.

I was inspired to make the cat with hand appliqué after watching a few too many Prospective Flow videos on YouTube.  I drew the cat figure trying to replicate a cat from a screen print I made back in August 2012. About all I remembered correctly were the teeth and the odd colors.

Purple Chips

 Here are my purple diamonds to add to my set of rainbow colors for the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. 

And for those of you that enjoy garden shots, here is a rose growing in my backyard. I had never seen this rose before it started to do this. Due to a locally notorious ice-storm, my backyard transitioned from a shade garden to a sunny garden after six trees attacked my house. This rose, planted by the previous owners, was hiding out under azaleas, and is now enjoying its time in the sun.

And meet Molly's new friend. This cat comes up to our back patio to have staring contests with Molly. Molly takes the visitor in stride. Buddy seems confused, probably wondering how Molly can be in two places at once. The cat seems healthy and is well groomed, so I assume it belongs to a neighbor. But Molly's attraction is strong, because I took this picture after it had started to rain and the cat had moved to beneath the eaves. After I shut the blinds, the cat left. (This was not her first visit.)

Let the chips fall...

If Molly has her way, these red chip blocks will fall to floor and become part of Buddy's playground. If I get my way, I'll link up with the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge before its tomorrow or a week or two have gone by.

My computer has gotten so slow, I look back fondly to the speedy days when we used modems. As a sign of the times, my computer is suffering from too many conflicts where software does not completely uninstall when you ask politely. So when the ball of doom rotates, I wonder off and engage elsewhere.

I need about 300 more light microspools so I prepared a new batch. This is a charm quilt so each spool is a different fabric. To make a 60 inch square quilt, I need 1600 microspools. The vertical spools will be dark in value while the horizontal ones will be light. Since my stash tends to be on the dark side, I have found it challenging to get enough lights. Also the range for the lights is limited because it has to be dark enough to stand out from the background yet not fall to the dark side, and exceedingly nebulous line to draw.

Seeing Red

Here are some bits of red in varying sizes of bitness. I am going to keep this post short because I fear that by the time I finish it, May will already be over. Time is flying so I must be having fun. If you want productive and wholesome fun, dash over to the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge to see much better uses of time.

And once you get past all the drama, Kooky and Pukey are just fine.

Accountability

I precut about a gazillion microspools and am almost finished making them. This quilt calls for about 800 dark spools and 800 light spools. I have made more than enough dark spools and was a few hundred short of the light spools. Here is about 150 spools that I have recently made but not counted. I don't want the microspool quilt to repeat any of the fabrics used for the spools so each time I count I go through and take out duplicates. And yes, every time I make the official count and log it in the spreadsheet, I find I have only made a gabillion. Quite a let down.

And here is the final layout for the slow fish. It is always interesting to hear other interpretations...such as referring to the "odd" fish. Which fish is odd? For me, I didn't like the dark high contrast burgundy fish attracting all of the attention. Plus it has a close look alike in the right corner. So with a bit of substitution, I don't find my eye going straight to the center and staying there. (Your eyes may differ).

Meanwhile, Fancy and Farty are doing just fine, although Fancy seems to disapprove of her name.

Gentle Waters

Here is the most recent layout for the slow fish. It is always helpful to view the layout online because weird patterns or concentrations of dark and/or bright reveal themselves. I may be revisiting the choice of the central fish, but otherwise I don't see anything that will annoy me too much after I have them sewn together.

I should also mention that I took a trip down a very deep rabbit hole. I thought it would be hilarious to put the slow fish in tilted blocks and call the quilt Storm at Sea. So I put wide borders around one fish and made the measurements for the wedges needed to make the tilt and square of the block. Next, I laid out the fish to figure out the blocks that would be tilt up and those that would tilt down. And that's when I realized that these fish are essentially circles and tilted circles are quite boring. The slow fish looked slightly tipsy but certainly not in the throes of a storm.

So back to the design wall...and yes, my design wall is finally back in place.

And in case you are wondering, my cats Shadow and Stinky are doing fine.