Quilt Blocks and Calves

I went totally into the weeds with the positive/negative quilt project. The whole thing started with a fat quarter bundle of ten prints from the Pepper and Flax line by Corey Yoder, bought at the quilt store in Spokane. Ten fat quarters—eight, really, because two of them didn’t provide enough contrast with the white background—were not enough for a decent-sized quilt. The store in Spokane probably still has bolts of of that line, but given the current state of things, it’s not likely I can get more from them. I went stash diving and pulled up some coordinating prints and started churning out blocks.

I’ve long maintained that I don’t like quilts made solely out of one fabric line, because they tend to be too matchy-matchy. I like the occasional rogue fabric tossed in to liven things up. It’s possible I may have gone overboard with the rogue fabrics on this one, though. The finished blocks went up on my design wall and I liked what I was seeing. However, at some point, the blocks started arguing with each other. In particular, there were two different yellows that didn’t want to play nicely together. One is a cool lemon yellow and the other is a brighter, warmer yellow. Even when separated by quite a distance, they continued to yell at each other. And once that brawl started, it upset the overall balance of the entire quilt.

At the moment, the whole project is in time out. I have the blocks separated into two piles. One pile is made up of only Pepper and Flax prints. I was able to find two more prints in that fabric line from an online store, and if I am careful, I might be able to get enough blocks for at least a lap-sized quilt. It looks so matchy-matchy to me, though. The other pile has the blocks made from stash fabric. I have enough of those to make a second quilt, but even though the color combination is similar to the Pepper and Flax line, it seems rather flat to me.

At this point, I’m leaning toward making as many blocks out of the Pepper and Flax fabric as I can and filling in—judiciously—with a few blocks from the stash block pile. That pile includes one print that really helped jazz things up quite a bit. Once I get one quilt done, I’ll look at the blocks I have left over and decide what to do with those. I may have to jettison those lemon yellow blocks and make them into a wall hanging instead of a quilt.

The husband observed that if this were 1880, I’d be sewing every scrap of fabric I could get my hands on into a quilt without regard to what color it was. Point taken.

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It snowed all weekend; I think we got more snow in the first four days of April than we had in all of February and March combined. I’ve lived in Montana for 27 years—long enough to know better—but I am still baffled as to why we have winter in the spring instead of the winter. I have to content myself with going out to the greenhouse and talking to the seedlings. A second variety of cowpeas has come up, as did the cucumbers and most of the tomatoes. I mixed aged manure into the potting soil when I planted seeds, and the corn looks like I planted it in nuclear waste. Some of the plants are 3” tall already. I may have to put the corn out a bit earlier than planned and put hoops over it.

I was thinking about skipping chicks this year, but the husband still wants to get a dozen or so. The problem is getting them from the farm store. We are hearing about shortages because so many people have decided to take up homesteading. And we never know when the farm store will get in a shipment of chicks. In a normal year, I’d just stop in every couple of days to see what they have. I don’t want to go out until I have to, though, so I am going to have to call them every day and hope my timing is good. I can’t be as picky about breed this year, either. I may have to take whatever egg-laying breed is available.

The alternative strategy is to wait a few months until all the people who got chicks thinking they wanted to be homesteaders change their minds and want to get rid of them.

The weather is supposed to warm up this week—”warm” being 50 degrees instead of 18 degrees. I still have to start melon and zucchini seeds and I have a bag of sprouting potatoes that need to be planted.

Cathy’s Dexter cows have started dropping their calves. The first one to show up was this adorable little bull calf (picture taken before it snowed):

His mama is such a pretty red color. It will be interesting to see if his color changes as he gets older.