I spent much of the week cutting out fabric and making hourglass blocks for the Exploding Heart quilt. There was a lot of trimming since the initial squares were all cut oversized and all needed to be 4.5" square when ready to sew. There are six different variations of the hourglass with 3 color families. Today I started putting the quilt together, but it's slow going. There's a chart to follow but each row has 18 different squares. It's easy to become confused, so it's good to take it easy. I did put together 3 rows so far, and I hope to do a few more each day. Maybe I'll be finished by the end of the week?
Yesterday was a genealogy group day, so I headed down to the library for our meeting. One person came via Zoom (which unfortunately cut off after 40 minutes), and six others came. The low turnout was probably because of the cold. It was 12 below zero at around 8 am. It did warm up to about 20 with the sun during the day, but after lunch Suzan and I delivered invitations for our neighborhood ladies' luncheon using a car rather than walking like we usually do. It took just as long to drive as it does to walk, but at least we could warm up a bit in between houses. The luncheons are at a restaurant downtown, and usually 15-20 people come. It's a nice way to connect with neighbors, especially during the winter when no one ventures farther than the mailbox and back.
This morning, after sewing on the Exploding Heart for a while, I gathered what I'll need for a landscape quilting class with Beth Ann Williams via Zoom tonight. I'm looking forward to it; I really enjoyed her machine quilting class last summer. We'll learn her machine applique techniques which involve turning the seams under.Mostly, though, I would like to use a picture from the newspaper that's been hanging on my wall for years as a jumping off point for my landscape. Camel's Hump is a very familiar view in our part of Vermont. We can even see it from our neighborhood. This sunset photo is one I copied from an online search of images. The one from the newsletter is a bit different, but both will offer a good starting point.