The Weekend - Part 1, The Cutting

I’m at the Michigan House this weekend – cutting grass, picking up fallen branches and of course, getting in some uninterrupted sewing time.  Saturday was bright, sunny and warm – a perfect day, the scent of freshly mown grass, mingled with pine trees on a gentle breeze.  It calms me like nothing else in the world can.  This place is so very special to me in many ways.

This Spring has been wet and chilly, with standing water on part of the north half of the property staying around a lot longer than usual.  A good portion of that side of the year has a base of moss under the grass - it's like walking on a giant sopping wet sponge.  So far, I've haven't be able to mow that side of the yard...and it's June!  

I was hoping it would be dry enough to cut.  I made exactly two passes - one toward the hose faucet and one back. 

Before the Cut

The 2 pass Cut

As far as I could go

That's it!  So. Not. Happening.  Time to call in the professionals!  

I headed indoors for some cutting...of the fabric kind. 

195 pieces - 190 triangles

Each block uses 39 pieces, for a total of 195 pieces in the row.  The center block only has 7 colors with the two side blocks using 11 colors, 19 colors total across 3 different blocks (the remaining 2 side blocks are mirror images). 

Some of the fabrics started out as fat quarters or less and I was just squeaking through cutting of some of the pieces.  I resorted to tea dyeing the replacement pink Stonehenge in Tazo Passion tea to get the two 3 1/2 inch HSTs cut.

Yes - even though I had redone the cut list for this row, I had to use the half dog-eaten list to piece from as I had forgot to bring the twin row with me for reference.  And, in order to figure out the sashing and borders, I'm going to have to redraw and color the scale row.  Stupid dog!
 Next up - the stitching!