Part 2 of Bonnie Hunter Mystery Chilhowie

 Here are a few of the units from Part 2 of Bonnie Hunter's new mystery challenge Chilhowie. This quilt has a white for the neutral background, a persimmon-type orange as a medium, teal for the dark and coral for the light. And if you are keeping score, so far we have only used up about 20 percent of the neutral/white fabric but have used about 50 percent of the dark. Fascinating!

Today was a bit traumatic for Buddy. A comment on the last post suggested that he might have been responsible for scrabbling the strips and causing numerous errant strip sets. He could barely take a serious beauty nap because of all the laughter from Molly.

She was laughing at me, not Buddy. Molly insisted that I show the mess next to the sewing machine. She suspects that if Buddy did start moving strips around, the pile could only get neater given my strips are as close to absolute chaos as possible. But I do appreciate the assumption that I work in an orderly way and that only a cat could cause human error.

Bonnie Hunter Mystery 2022

 Bonnie Hunter started her mystery challenge Chilhowie last week and I was so pleased that she eased us into the challenge with some simple four-patches and nine patches. [Insert sound of loud record scratch].

It turns out what is easy in my theoretical brain turned into long sessions with my seam ripper. And maybe some cussing. But let's go back a step to color choices...I like teal/aqua and orange, but didn't want to revisit a purple and orange quilt. So instead of having the orange as a medium bright, I moved aqua/teal to the dark, and orange (that is, coral) to the light. The background is still white. For medium bright, I am planning on a multicolor (or a few friendly multicolors) fabric that I expect to jump out of my stash sometime along the way.

Meanwhile, let's discuss where theory and reality don't match. Essentially all I had to do for the strip sets were dark teal strips with coral on either side and coral with white on either side. When I took my strip sets to the ironing board I found all sorts of combinations...teal surrounded by white and orange surrounded by teal. And yes, one strip set was orange with a white strip sewn to a white strip. !!!

This was not one night of bad sewing...but repeated throughout the week.

And maybe my language behavior may have required a teacher-parent conference.

Orange for Thanksgiving

 I switched over to this project for a change of pace. 

Of course, the audit took longer than the block construction.

And apparently one is supposed to go outside occaisionally and look around.

And finally, if you prefer your turkey as a balloon animal...please enjoy:  https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2022/11/masayoshi-matsumoto-balloon-animals/

The End of Matchmaking

The smallish spools are taking up most of my sewing time. The bottom box shows all of the pairs except for a pile next to the sewing machine (that I was too lazy to include in this photo). In the box at the top are the four patches. I find it interesting that single spools are unwieldy, and the pairs are barely manageable. But the four patches, with their spun seams on the back, lay nice on flat. And I should note that I ironed the single spools, but won't iron them again until they are 16-patches.

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.

On the Light Side

Here are some more light spools I made to match up with more spools of medium value. Okay, a few dark value spools too.

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.

Not so Tiny After All Spools

 Yes, this photo has a yellow cast...and I either have to set up better lighting or sew earlier in the day to take photos during the day. In any case, while I was busy fussing with pairing off the last piles of single spools, the four patches got together to form eight patches.

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

Frames

In November 2020, Lynn Dykstra started a calendar quilt where she framed a fabric for each day...and you can read about it here: https://kleinmeisjequilts.blogspot.com/2021/11/62-to-63-calendar-quilt-in-time-of.html

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.