Baby It's Cold Outside!

 Yesterday's batting run into town was a real adventure.  It was so cold.  The weather app on my phone said it was 28 degrees.  But in a tiny little whisper font under 28 it said, feels like 16.  In my mind I thought it should read more like this. 

28

😲FEELS LIKE 16!!

The really fun part was trying to get to my car.  Getting in and out of the car was video worthy.  I'm pretty sure it would have went viral on YouTube.  The driveway is a solid sheet of ice and is slightly sloped into our property.  Just enough for gravity to take hold.  If I can get out of the driveway it's smooth sailing because the roads are clear. The arrow below is pointing to the road in front of the house.

 It was quite exhilarating and a great workout.  I'm pretty sure I worked every muscle in my body while trying to stay on my feet and off my keister.  All of this trouble for batting.  It would have been worth every bit of trouble had they had batting.  That's right, no batting.  They had batting at Walmart but it was small sizes.  Their website said it was in stock.  It's another 12 miles to Joann's but it was just too cold for this old gal.  So I made another stop for Mr. Podunk's Super Bowl foods then headed back to the house.  

Franken-batting is the new plan.  So I unroll the batting and see that it's a little wrinkled and could use an overnight relaxing time.  So I sprayed it down with with water and let it work its magic.  It should be fairly wrinkle free by morning.  Well it wasn't.  So today I'll toss it in the dryer for a few minutes with a wet wash cloth.

Since my plan for the day was shot I decided to do a little needed cleaning in the Studio.  I could sort through the scrap bins starting from the top bins and work my way down.  On top of the scrap bins is baskets, might as well start there.  The white baskets is my fabric pull for current quilts, no need to mess with these.  

The blue baskets are UFO's.  Let's start here.  I don't remember how far along I made it on each project, maybe there's a quick finish hiding in these.

Well would you look at this.  A UFO I was looking for about  month ago.  Miss Judy if you're reading this I found my dresden's for our bed runner project!  Did you find yours?

Judy is my neighbor, she is fairly new to quilting.  The dresden bed runner project was something quick and easy, and she could learn a few new quilty things along the way.(I made a tutorial for how to cut dresden blades from a charm pack, you can find it here) Sadly Judy's had a couple bad years on the farm.  When her home caught fire it put out the flames on our project.  Then she had health issue and more life, you know how it is, when it rains it pours.  Hopefully this spring the sun will be shining on Judy once again.  I can't wait to start playing with this Laura Ashley fabric.

Here's what I remember being in this basket.  Sugar and Spice. Quilt kits are not my thing.  I've purchased two in 30+ years.  This one was from our local quilt shop.  It had been in the shop for about 2 years.  They sold out of the kits once and made another batch of kits.  Every time I went in the shop I would look at the kit, then put it back.  When there was one kit left I grabbed it, walked around the store for a LONG time looking for something else to buy.  During this time I was also trying to convince myself I didn't need the kit.  It's just a dresden, I've made several dresden quilts, I can make this without a pattern, I have plenty of fabric in my stash.  As you can see none of these reason changed my mind.

Can you hear that?  Angels sing every time I see these sweet little dresden's with yo-yo's.  Too darn cute!  In one bag is 8 finished dresden's.  In bag 2 is 7 dresden's needing the yo-yo's to be sewn into place.

Each little yo-yo was made by hand.  No yo-maker.  Just me and my needle.  

Most of them were made while sitting in doctors offices and chemo units with my mom when she was battling cancer.  Some would think this would stir up bad feelings but it doesn't.  Helping dad and taking care of mom during the battle she lost will always be a good memory.  It was hard and not fun but it was the right thing to do.  We were truly blessed to have such a supportive extended family.  

Anyway back to the cutie.  The handmade yo-yo's were a time killer but when it came time to attach them to the dresden I was ready to speed up the process by using my machine.  I used a tiny machine blanket stitch and invisible Superior Mono-Poly thread to connect the yo-yo's and to stitch them down to the dresden.

The same stitch and thread was used to stitch down the dresden.  After it's washed the stitching and slight puckers usually disappear but not always.  I can live with that.

This is the fabrics for the alternating chain block, borders and binding.  Not the fabrics I would have chosen but the shop sample looked great in these same fabrics.  It could be that I just love RED...LOL!  I rarely make a quilt without RED.  More often than not RED is the main fabric in my quilts.  Yes, I think it's time to work on this again.  Time to get her done and on display.  

Just another day of MOO-ving things along, my word of the year.