Dutchman's Puzzle

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! The northeast corridor got snow on Friday-- about 6" for us--and we're in the midst of another big storm today. I think we got at least 6" last night and today, and it's still snowing. 

The last few weeks have been quite busy with the usual day to day stuff, soap making, puzzle building, and a weekend visit from my granddaughter, who will be seven this year. She likes to work on her little puzzles while Grammie works on the big ones. 

More than anything else, I've been preoccupied with learning all about freeze drying food. The image of empty store shelves during the pandemic has stayed in my head, so hubby and I talked it up and bought a freeze dryer from Harvest Right several weeks ago. Haha, had I known that eggs were going to hit $6+ a dozen, I'd have bought a freeze dryer six months ago.

Since then I've been reading everything I could find and watching YouTube videos on the subject. So far, we've only done one load of bananas and apples; but when the storm is over, we're throwing in a load of mac and cheese and maybe a tray of mushrooms if there's room. My plan is to focus mostly on meals this winter, then fresh produce in the spring and summer. 

I have done some sewing for the Scrappy Rainbow Challenge. The color this month is dark and bright blues. Rather than a rainbow project, my focus was to use up as many of the blues in Barbara's Scrap Bag as I could.

I realized early on that the mix of her prints is so varied that I wasn't going to fit them all into one or two projects, so I worked on a few different blocks. There was quite a lot of that dark navy with the little vine, and I pieced most of that together and am using it as the backing on a small top that used the same fabric as the border.

There are these rectangle bar blocks (I got bored with these pretty quickly); the Eastern Sunrise string blocks; a Scrappy Rectangles block (I got bored with those too); Bonnie Hunter's 2022 Leaders and Enders Triple Treat Challenge; and if I could get a 1-1/2" strip out of a smaller piece of fabric before it went into the string pile, some Bitcoin strips, also a Bonnie Hunter pattern. 

And because I can't make up my mind about much of anything these days, I don't know where any of these projects are going. Except the Triple Treat--that one I'm actively working on. I did come across a pattern called Scrap Happy Rainbow Connection from Amy Smart, which seems to be popular, so I might actually do a rainbow project after all.

Either way, I've whittled Barbara's blues down to this small pile, and I'm working on using up the rest of them, hopefully in one of the above projects.

 

Over the weekend I dug out these Dutchman's Puzzle blocks and assembled them into a small top because I needed some focus. The edges still need to be trimmed up and borders applied. 

This project is another pretty old UFO, and it's one of my 2023 UFO challenges. With just a few exceptions, I used reds, golds, blues, and greens in the blocks and sashings. I like it so much that I may use some of the left over blocks and make a double sized quilt for my guest room. Still signing it off on the challenge list when I get this one finished though!

Some of that dark blue with the little vine from Barbara's scraps went into the sashing on this quilt too.   

Linking to Oh Scrap!