Drizzle Slop

Today was yet another overcast rainy day. Mostly it was drizzle all day - sloppy wet and muddy. Sigh.

When I woke up this morning (barely:), I was determined to get my blood tests done. Skip stayed home today (as a contractor to the federal government, he did not have President's Day off but had to use a day of leave) - he had a dentist appointment in the early afternoon and a physical therapy appointment in the early evening. I talked him into taking me to the lab to have blood drawn and then to Walgreens to pick up my medicines in exchange for eating lunch out together. :) Win - win deal!

We had a nice lunch at Ledo's again - I had a new (to me) Ravioli du Boef (ravioli with beefsteak inside and a sauce of roasted tomatoes). Skip had some kind of Italian version of steak and cheese sub (but spicy, he said). I noticed as we ate that the winter bare-limbed trees are still looking quite lacy ... there are some beautiful things about winter (loathe as I am to recognize them:). By the time we were finished, it was time for Skip's dentist so he dropped me at home and drove off.

On Saturday when I was at Springwater Designs, I found a pattern I quite liked (see photo above) that is designed to use 10" squares of focal prints ... I also bought two different panel prints to use it with. One of them has cats, the other elephants. Today when I sat down to sew, I got motivated to use six of the eight elephant panels to make a baby quilt for my daughter. :) While Skip was out, I ran over to Springwater again and found some fabrics to use with my elephants - two shades of 'burnt orange' and a nice teal Civil War reproduction print (my daughter's favorites). Here are two of the three blocks I sewed this afternoon:

I started off thinking I would do the darker sashing with a pure blue print but the more we looked at fabrics, the more it became clear to me that blue just would not work the way I envisioned. Good thing I'm flexible. :) You might note that the orange prints in the two pictures are not the same - I could not decide between the dark orange and the more medium one - so I took both. :) I think it will give the finished quilt a richer background.

I like the way the colors move in a diagonal path in the pattern ... and am hoping my small version does the same. I am making a two by three block version (can you see the marks I made on the pattern front?) as being plenty big enough for a little baby. :)

I want to back the quilt with minkey (or something similar). Springwater has a half dozen bolts  but none of the colors they had were even approaching good matches ... so, when I got home, I trolled online until I found two likely prints. One is teal with white elephants (rather juvenile in silhouette), the other is a gray background with teal elephants, lions and boabab trees. :) So hard to trust the monitor for color reality ... I am hoping that one of them will work for a backing. The other one will get made into a small blanket. :)

That was the only sewing I did today - I pieced half of the quilt top. Tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment in the morning and I hope to go back to piecing the other half in the afternoon. I am debating whether to quilt this in two pieces or just the whole thing at once. It won't be a very big quilt  (maybe 38"x 52"?) so might be manageable.

:) Linda

PS Sharing at Linky Tuesday. :)

Comments

[BillieBee]

So love your Elephants!