Friday, November 28, 2014

Snow Days

Yesterday was my usual day to work at The Shop.  Today I was supposed to fill in there for the other part-time gal.

Both days, I stayed home instead...because of the snow, blowing snow, drifting snow...and today the temps dropped into the mid-minus thirties Celsius.  Brrrrr!

With an hour "off" here and there to shovel the walks and driveway, I spent the past couple of days on these projects:

Baking for the Second Annual Open House & Tea
at the Mirror & District Museum, Sunday, Novembeer 30

Turning 'strings' into blocks for a quilt top

Prepping more strips and strings for quilt tops
Left & centre: for a string quilt; right: for the Postage Stamp Quilt


Working on Wild Sock #2 -- I'm on the heel flap now -- and adding inches to the "Martyn" infinity scarf.

And what's several feet of fresh powder snow without a bit of snow dyeing?

I quickly soaked a batch of miscellaneous pieces -- one large piece of silk and several bits and bobs of cotton muslin -- in soda ash.  Then I laid the pieces out in a criss-cross fashion on a rack in the bottom of a plastic tub:




I covered the lot to the brim with fresh snow, and sprinkled it with MX dye powder:


Half covered with turquoise; half, with Sky Blue;
then centre third sprinkled with Golden Yellow.
All dyes from Dharma.

The resulting pieces have been washed and are drying.  Photos to follow in another post...

The highlight of today, though, was the release of Clue #1 in Bonnie K. Hunter's 2014 Mystery Quilt, "Grand Illusion".  I'm aiming for half the size (so...44" square vs. 88" square) and am starting cautiously.

For example, the first clue calls for 280 half-square triangles (HSTs); I'm planning on 140 and have, to date, assembled 60. Of the 280, 200 are to be used to make 100 small blocks along with squares in two other colours.  I'm planning on 50 small blocks, which will take 100 HSTs...but will begin with 25 small blocks and 50 HSTs to see how far my fabric will take me.  Capisce?  ;-)

Here's the start of my HST construction.  I'm using fairly deep colour values for the 'geranium' and 'turquoise' -- all from stash.  I'm determined not to buy any fabric for this project!




And here's the first 60 of my HSTs in stacks of 20.  Don't they look pretty?  Order out of chaos!


At 2 1/2" square, they'll finish at 2" in the quilt

I found a stash of "Thangles" triangle paper that is speeding up the construction process; here's my bag of discarded foundation paper from the "Thangles" and from the string blocks, waiting to be recycled:

Don't you recycle your foundation paper?  ;-)

All in all it's been a rewarding couple of days.  On tap for this weekend: start on Christmas cards, sing at church, "pour out" at the Museum's Open House & Tea...

And MOB's First Anniversary is tomorrow.  There will be a special post on the MOB blog for the occasion.  Stay tuned!

Linking this up now with Nina Marie's Off-the-Wall Friday...and will follow that with a cuppa and a good book.  G'night all!


4 comments:

Jenny K. Lyon said...

Minus 30 plus a stiff wind??? No wonder you are so wonderfully productive. You have this all figured out-what lovely things cold temperatures produce!

els said...

You definitely didn't waste your time. What a production. Wonderful!

Kaja said...

I've never tried snow dyeing (but then we don't get that much snow) but it looks like fun. Your HSTs are coming along well - that many would make my head spin!

elle said...

You have some great projects on the go. We were out yesterday in the snow and wind. Brrr!!! Definitely shoveling weather.