Snowzilla

By now, you have all heard of our blizzard this past weekend which has been nicknamed “Snowzilla.” The snow started around noon on Friday and didn’t stop until the wee hours of Sunday morning depositing over two feet of snow in most of the region. Of course, one of our official totals is only about 18 inches taken at National Airport but they lost their measuring stick in the snow early Saturday evening. Really. They lost it in the snow.

Obviously, this amount of snow is not something we are used to in this area so we are without all of the big, wonderful snow removal equipment which many of you take for granted. When big storms hit, we hunker down and, as quilters, our snow days become sew days.

There were lots of emails going back and forth among all of us from the Studio. In one, Dana passed along an e-mail from Quilting Adventures: “A CEO isn’t what you think. It refers to a Completely Executed Object, what you get when you finish up all those UFOs (UnFinished Objects)or NESOs (Not Even Started Object)or CUPs (Completely Unstarted Project)!”  It seems we all have lots of those UFOs, NESOs and CUPs on hand so I thought I would share some of the projects my staff and I worked on while the snow flakes fell. Marion is preparing last year’s Craftsy BOM quilt to “quilt as you go” on her home machine. It will be a first for her which she says, “I experience often with quilting, so the confidence is not there yet.”

Rebecca has two projects she’s working on. She took a “Lone Starburst” class from Kimberly Einmo this fall and here are her blocks.  She used the Palette Tropics pixie strips and a Palette fabric for the background. She has been rearranging the layout of the blocks on her design wall and this is her current favorite.

She is also working on a “One Block Wonder” from the book by Maxine Rosenthal.  A group from her guild decided to make this with each making their own using completely different fabrics. They got together to do the first round of cutting and plan to get together again at the layout stage.

It seems quite a few people are working on two projects. Diane just finished this cute purse and is now working on the applique for Calliope.

Nancy is working on getting one project ready for basting and finishing up the binding on her fat eighth quilt (from this week’s web special).

Linda put a her “Sunset Walk” quilt in the hoop and is looking forward to having a hand project to work on this winter. It is made from my palette #8 collection and she says when finished it will be a perfect quilt for her guest room.

Julia shared this UFO she’s working on now – Foundation String Pieced Eight Pointed Stars – started in a workshop with Fran Kordek of Elkins, WV in the spring of 2004.  It has lots of older fabrics. And yes, that is a “Perfect Piecer” she is using to mark the intersections of the pieces. She said she will keep making stars until the green strips in the box are used up.

Janet says she is always working on multiple projects. She decided to share this one that she started after Christmas.  She is hand piecing “Ballet with Kaffe Fassett” from Millefiori Quilts 2. “But I should call it Ballet with Jinny Beyer!  So far this is all I have.  Get back to me in a few years when it is further along!  The pieces are quite small, so it is time consuming, but I’m enjoying sewing it.”

Others are busy on other projects (but we don’t have pictures) and I even took the time to baste my Calliope quilt and have started quilting it.

I sent my son-in-law, Rob, who made my quilt frame, a photo of the quilt in the frame and said I FINALLY had time to put a quilt in it after several months. This was his response.

“It’s nice when time sort of stops and you can get to do some things you wouldn’t have done otherwise.”

Time stopped for me this weekend and I’m enjoying doing some quilting!