Cranky Thursday

Everyone in our house was cranky last night, including me.  I am blaming the extreme heat--100 degree temps and 100+ heat index.

So I made myself an adult beverage and set to some mindless ironing, which of course made me hot and sweaty but did give me a sense of accomplishment.

Then I worked on my Star Struck quilt (a Bonnie K. Hunter design) which I am making largely out of my 2 1/2" strip bin, with some stash fabrics thrown in to make up the difference.

I'm using a variety of light fabrics and all the warm-color strips I could pull out of the bin for the darks.  It's shaping up very nicely, and I have gotten to the step of adding the light triangle, using the stitch and flip method.

Bonnie recommends that you stitch again about 3/8" away from the first stitching, to give little "bonus" half-square triangles, so of course I did that!

I have a nice little pile of quilt units started, plus a little stack of half-square triangles.  But once again, bed was calling so I called it a night, tired but a lot less cranky than when I started.  Quilting can do that for a girl.

Mid-Week Quilting

Last night I worked on my Rustic Circles quilt, stitching the blocks together.

I always find this one of the more boring parts of putting a quilt together, so I just added one block to each row before I moved on to more interesting things.

Cutting up some of my big stack of recycled shirt fabrics!

My cut strips are on the left-hand side of the cutting mat, in the top photo.  I am using Bonnie K. Hunter's Scrap User's System, to which I have added a 4th strip size--4 1/2".  This seems to be a very usable size to me, playing well with the 2 1/2" and 1 1/2" strips, and making 12" blocks more achievable from scraps.

I am loving this system, as well as the fun of finding and cutting up used men's shirts.  It's an addiction...but a very affordable one, so I'm not being too hard on myself!

I had a little help from my two charming and adorable stepdaughters.

Thanks, girls!

And from that little pile of strings there in front of the flowers, I couldn't resist making a little 6 1/2" string block.

Although I was tempted to stay up and whip out a whole pile of these, I had to head for bed.  That whole business of getting up in the morning and going to work really cramps my quilting style!

1000+ Degrees

Forecast for today in NW MO:
102 degrees, heat index of 110+
Oy vey.

Everything is wilting, including me.

These are the kind of days that I think about the pioneer women, wearing their long dresses with long sleeves, plus petticoats.  How did they do it?!  Those women were made of stern stuff.