2009 June 04 | Suzanne Earley

The siding came off yesterday, and the Tyvek went up.

The windows came out today, and no surprise: one of them was seriously rotten. I can’t wait until they do the bay window. I’m sure that’ll be just as lovely.

The bits of wood on the ground are some of what came off that rotten corner. It just crumbled if you touched it.

The door came out today, too, and I have to warn you: the pictures are not for the fainthearted homeowner:

On the one hand, I love this house, but when I see stuff like this, I start to wonder if the damn thing is going to just crumple into a heap one of these days.

Wade and TJ put in a long day and got a lot done:

All 5 new windows are in, and this was before the door went in. Because of the rotten wood, it took longer to put in than expected.

The bay still needs to be replaced, but he needs to round up some extra helpers: that sucker is heavy, and it will require some muscle to deal with.

As it is, the helpers that come with Wade and TJ aren’t really much help:

Maggie is a well-behaved young lady of about 2 (I think?).

Zoe is a very energetic 6 month old Husky.

It’s been quite a hoot to have 4 dogs running around here this week. Katie hates it. She is totally intimidated by all of the bigger dogs. Cocoa’s not entirely sure what to think.

It’s been a long, busy day. I think I’m going to curl up with a book, another long busy day will be here before I’m ready for it.

TTFN-

Suzanne

I spread out the fabric and started taking pictures, and just happened to get a flash of my shirt up next to the pile of fabric.

Fabric, cont’d

When I put together the EQ drawing, it was easiest to use a single fabric of each color. I could have even put the quilt together that way, too: a single dark blue, a single light blue, a single red, and a single cream. However, I decided that it would be much more interesting to hvae some variety. You’ll note that I am sticking with a single dark blue, and if I hadn’t told you that the creams were different, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell from this particular photo, but trust me, they are slightly different patterns. I like that they are different, but it’s a very subtle difference.

And even though there is a range of light blues, I didn’t go with a huge amount of variations there, either. Those pieces are going to be pretty tiny when finished, and my hope is that they’ll just melt together, glittering away around the edges of the dark blue star points.

I had intended to go with a single red, but when I grabbed these 3 from the shop, I decided that I liked the idea of using all 3. More is more, right?

Cutting

The project is officially a go, so I got started with some cutting last night. (I had spent some quality time the night before pressing and starching. Ordinarily I skip the prewash step, and dive right in to the fabric, but on this project I don’t want to take ANY chances, so into the wash went the fabric…)

I am notoriously bad about waiting too long to change rotary cutter blades, so Mom, you’ll be happy to hear that I did change my blade before I started cutting.

I have found, though, that I cannot STAND to cut an entire quilt at one time, so last night I just cut out some light blue and cream squares so I could get started making half-square triangle units.

Isn’t that an exciting picture? Are you wondering how I’m cutting 8 inch squares is going to help me make 1 inch finished half-square triangle units?

Well, stay tuned, that deserves a whole post of it’s own. I’d post it now, but I completely drained the camera battery and am impatiently waiting for it to recharge.

For now, your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to tell me how YOU approach cutting for a large quilt project. I like to cut for awhile, then sew for awhile, then cut some more: I can’t even imagine actually standing and cutting the entire thing at once. What about you?