Blizzard, New Top, Crumbs

      Parts of the Western New York area has been through a blizzard. Well, I live just a block north of the city of Buffalo and did experience high winds, incredible wind chills, and whiteouts, but this was nothing like the Blizzard of 77, my gold standard of blizzards. Because so many highways were closed, there was little stranding or drama. Actually, today, I have had more snow than during the blizzard. I think the other snow blew into some other county. Because of the weather, most things I had to do were cancelled, so I was "forced" to sew, sure, right. 

My backyard today

   When I looked through my projects, I decided to sew Rubik's crush, a free pattern from Quilting Arts (it was in a free ebook). I bought the fabric  over a year ago and cut the large floral blocks them. Just love the fabric. I needed to sew the 17 blocks that are the small 2 1/2" blocks with teeny sashing, not my favorite. I would not sew it the way they said again. I would not sew 1" sashing to 2 1/2" squares again. It is almost impossible for me to keep them straight. I would sew 2 1/2" strips to a strip of sashing, and then trim them into sets. You can see that even though I tried hard, the blocks are not precise. I decided just to keep going and sew all of them. Today, I put them on the design wall where I will label the block rows and numbers so I can sew them. I struggled sewing them on the tempermental 201 and switched to a trusty 301 near the end for the sashing. 

Block centers

On the design wall, blocks are 12.5"

    When the wind was really howling, I could not concentrate, so I treadled my crumbs on my Singer 15 treadle, which is soothing therapy for me. I sew the scraps, and then trim them to 6.5" blocks for another crumb quilt. I have not decided how to set these. The last one I did in attic windows (not quilted yet). 

Crumbs being assembled

6.5" crumb blocks, each one a little composition