Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Nov. 18--Quilting Night~

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I posted these first two pictures? Of the nice soft flannels I had gotten to make quilts out of?


There was the pink/lavender combo.
The one with butterflies and flowers as well as stripes and dots.



Then there was the blue combo.

The one with airplanes and little cars that said beep beep and vroom vroom.

As well as stripes and dots.


Yeah, those.
Well tonight at class, everyone was pretty much settled into a course of action, the kind of night where I don't have to do much except provide some encouragement and maybe a little direction here and there.
So I brought my fabrics, and my rotary cutter, and started in.
By the time I was ready to close up shop, those fabrics had been transforemed into this:
stacks of squares, all lined up nice and neat in my Ravelry tote. (It was a prize in a drawing, thank you HomesteadMom!)

General info: I cut these squares 9" and will cut the batting at 7". Batting is some slightly elderly Mountain Mist cotton--you know, the kind you should quilt every inch or so?? Not gonna happen, but it will be perfect for these as it will shrink about in proportion to the fabrics, and it's thin enough as well.
That remains to be cut. There's a session on Friday night, if I have enough energy, where I could start sewing these together, assuming I can get that batting cut out in time.
Oh, I had 1.25 yards of each of the fabrics (7 in the pink/lavender colorway and 7 in the blue) and was able to get 20 squares, or 10 blocks' worth, from each fabric. If my calculations are correct, that will give me 70 blocks of each, which laid out in a 7 x 10 pattern will finish out to approximately 50" x 70" quilts. Ought to be a fairly good size for a bed or just to wrap up with on a chilly evening.
Supposing, of course, that we ever get such a thing here. I guess anything is possible...

Monday, November 17, 2008

Nov. 17--Happy Birthday, D5!

Yes, today was Little Missy's mommy's birthday. Two days after Little Missy's! Makes for a nice weekend of celebrating, at least!

Happy birthday!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Nov. 16--Smoky Sunday

So there are wildfires raging all around us, in a manner of speaking. None of them are very close to where I live, nor where any of my family lives, although the Yorba Linda fire is extremely close to D3's store. In fact, there is an evacuation center just behind the shopping center.

She's also run into lots of problems getting to and from work, since the freeways she usually takes are both blocked off.

We all met for breakfast today, to celebrate D5's birthday (which is actually tomorrow) and this is the view of the "Freeway Triangle" fire from the parking lot. (That's the Corona/Yorba Linda/Diamond Bar/Chino Hills area, south and east of the Sylmar Fire. )

You can get an idea of how fierce this fire is when I tell you it's probably a good 5-10 miles south of that line of freeway. Even up in our area, the sky is occluded with smoke, and the air smells like a campfire. There was ash blowing on the cars in that parking lot, although we haven't seen any ash up here.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a Montrose Monday, but with the Sylmar fire relatively close to that area, we're going to have to wait and see if it's feasible to go out in this. Latest bulletin is that the fire in the Sylmar/Newhall Pass area is again out of control. All we can do now is hope and pray that the winds die down, and the humidity goes up, and that the by-now-exhausted and overstretched crews can make some headway with these fires.

Videos!

Enjoy!