Icy

Today was spent indoors staying warm.  Charleston was struck by a ice storm overnight and we woke up this morning to an icy scene and all of the bridges in town shut down.

We had a few snow flakes in the air - but everything on the ground was a combination of freezing rain/sleet.
 

Our Washingtonia Palms do not like cold weather any more than we do.

This poor little guy spent quite a while on our live oak in the backyard - notice the ice on his tail.

He flew off soon after this photo - hopefully to a warmer perch.  We are supposed to be in the mid-70's this weekend.  

Blocks Done

After a long week of marking and quilting all twenty-five blocks are done.

I don't have a design wall large enough to put the quilt on so the blocks are on the floor - hence the poor photo.  I have started sewing the blocks together and will be un-sewing the plain center block and the grey pinwheel.  It creates a bit of a black (grey) hole effect.  The pin wheel will move to the center bottom and hopefully will look better.  I have lots of hand sewing on the back to do - luckily it is Downton Abbey and Sherlock tonight!

I really want to get this project finished soon as it is one of four quilts I am entering in the Cobblestone Quilters Guild Show in late February.  The next quilt up is Bloom - a whole cloth dye painted quilt - much more my cup of tea.

I am linking to Nina Marie Sayers Off the Wall Friday again this week. 

What Was I Thinking?

For the past week I have been working like mad on quilting my Quilt in a Box. Twelve unique blocks, eight setting triangles, four corners and one central block.

Twenty-five total.

I am using the border as the basis of my quilting design and spent many hours designing the main motif.  The half block sketch looks okay:

But it really starts to work when the other half is added:

By having the design touch the edge of the block in a couple of places it creates secondary designs.  One of the blocks that I have finished is the quarter circle block that I showed in the last post.  It now looks like this:

I really like where this is going but - - twenty-five blocks!  Thirteen are finished, six are marked (the most difficult part so far - finding a marker I can see has been a challenge because of the wide range of lights and darks I am working with) and ready to quilt.

I am linking to Nina Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday

Now just to Finish It!