Revenge of the Rectangles

Happy 2020! Following that old adage “Begin as you mean to go on,” let’s start the year with a blog post, some sewing, and the new shop.

I worked on the commission quilt yesterday. Halfway through slicing up a group of pieces into smaller ones so I could sew the smaller pieces back into a big piece—a process that confounds the husband—I looked at what I was doing and started laughing, but in order to tell you why I was laughing, I have to tell you a story.

Long ago, when I was about 4-1/2, my parents took me to a psychologist to have me evaluated. I was a very, shall we say, precocious 4-1/2 year-old, and they were trying to decide if they should send me to kindergarten a year early. I remember one part of that visit very clearly. I was seated at a small table and the psychologist (a man) had given me two blocks and asked me to make a rectangle from them. I moved those blocks around and around and for the life of me, I could not figure out how to make a rectangle out of them. I also remember becoming terribly frustrated and sensing that I was failing miserably at what was expected of me.

[I told this story to the husband and he—no doubt trying to be charitable—pointed out that 4-1/2 year olds fail at a lot of things. I responded that it was my suspicion that he, at 4-1/2, not only could put blocks together correctly to make a rectangle, but could also build intricate towers with them. I probably talked a lot more than he did at that age, though, something that hasn’t changed much.]

In order to make these Delectable Mountain quilt blocks, I have to start with rectangles of two different fabrics, cutting them on the diagonal like so:

Then I have to combine half a rectangle of one fabric with half a rectangle of the other fabric. That was when I started to have flashbacks to 4-1/2 year-old me. Do they go together like this?

Or like this?

Or—holding my breath—like this?

(Because my brain is better at these tasks than it used to be.)

Thank goodness batik fabrics don’t really have a right side or a wrong side, because then I would have been in trouble. This is the hardest part of the quilt and it is the center section. Once I get through this, I should have smooth sailing with the borders. Pray for me.

I made a couple of sets of these rectangle combinations and decided that was enough for one day. I am disciplined enough to stop before I begin making stupid mistakes. I made a few more Candy Coated strips, sewed the Scrapper’s Delight blocks into bigger sections, and finished making the remaining half of 96 charm square units—one print, one Kona—for a comforter top. I still have to sew the units together. I’m going to do that today, as well as make two more comforter envelopes to tie at the party in a few weeks. And we have sewing day at church tomorrow.

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The husband has spent the last couple of days framing the loft in the new shop:

The loft will be above the bathroom and is where the bolt bins and other assorted small supplies will live. He informs me that getting the air lines put in may happen soon, and that means he can move that ^&%$* air compressor over from the old garage. I’m hoping that by the time spring gets here and the weather improves, enough space will have been cleared in the old garage that I can put some industrial shelving out there and organize my sewing machines.

I bought Elysian’s little guy a model trebuchet kit for Christmas. He and I had brainstormed the possibility of building a “punkin’ chucker” to deal with the excess pumpkins from our gardens last fall and I thought it would be prudent to start with a scale model. He also thinks that we should have a zip line here in the neighborhood, although when we proposed the idea to the husband—the top of the new shop being the highest point—it was not met with a lot of enthusiasm. Oh, well.