I took the weekend to just goof off and I did my quilt homework too. I thought I might have trouble with this block because it looked intimidating, but hand piecing really levels the playing field as far as difficulty goes. It is great for accuracy since you have more control than you have with a sewing machine.
Figuring out how to draw the templates was a bit of a brain twister, but once I realized it was just a twelve inch square divided into fifths, it came together. The only frustrating thing is that twelve inches doesn’t divide so conveniently into fifths, at least not for me 🙂 This is when I go metric. Metric is so much easier. A fifth of a twelve-inch square is 6.1 centimeters, which is 2 3/8 inches. It’s just easier to do the math that way for me. Once you draw out a grid of five by five 2 3/8 squares, you can see how to draw the design. The long pointy blue triangles in the center part cross the span of two squares on the grid, with the longer diagonal line going from one corner of one square to the corner of the second square. The shorter diagonal line just spans one square on the grid. The block is assembled using the same techniques as the previous one.
I also made vegetable soup. This is when I take all the leftovers that are reasonable to use for soup stock, and dump them in a couple pots of water some onion, garlic, celery, carrots, and bay leaves. It is not an exact science. I let it simmer for a couple of hours, and then I strain it. I took about five cups of stock, a big can of diced tomatoes, 28 ounces, I think, and about five cups of sliced vegetables. I used carrots, celery, peas, green beans, corn, and parsley. I meant to add the parsley to the stock too, but I forgot. Now I have half a bunch of parsley in the fridge, and I’m not sure what to do with it. That kind of negates some of my satisfaction at using up the leftovers, but what do you do with parsley? I also added some macaroni to the soup. I added everything according to how long I thought it would take to cook, and let it boil until it was done.
Other than that, we have been editing more cat art doll photos of Max’s. We have more to do. I’ve let the web site updating go because I can only spin so many plates at once, but I really have to get going on that too. Sigh. Oh, I won’t even mention all the other things I have going. We’ll see what I get done!
