September Mini: Swamp Angel

 After seeing Wendy's Teeny Tiny Star mini in August, I really wanted to do a true mini quilt for September.  (BTW, this month's mini quilts are here)

I'd always wanted to play with the Swamp Angel quilt block (I think the reasons are obvious), so I made a 4.5 inch (finished) version as a practice block.  I used instructions from Judy Hopkins' 501 Rotary Cut Quilt Blocks, which did not utilize any speed piecing techniques and was therefore very fiddly to construct.

After making one block, I knew I needed to use some different piecing methods for the HSTs and Hourglass blocks AND I decided I needed to go up a block size to get the best results from my chosen focus fabric.  So much for making a "true" mini!

I already had the perfect Swamp Angel fabric in my stash...

Did you know there multiple ways to arrange the fabrics in a Swamp Angel block?  I could've spent days trying out all the different configurations, but since I was aiming for a small quilt, I kept it simple.
 

Final Swamp Angel, with machine quilted fans.  Finished size:  20 inches by 20 inches.

The backing fabric also came from the stash. 

I had a little fun with the label.  It turns out, there were two alligator stories associated with Hurricane Ida, and since alligators are definitely swamp critters (and I have a fondness for them), I thought I should include one.

First, let me say that alligators are a fact of life around here.  Even though New Orleans is an urban environment, they have found ways to make themselves at home in our midst.  Since we're surrounded by water, it's not difficult to imagine how alligators find their way into the city.  Every park and golf course with a water feature is bound to have resident alligators.  Our city is crisscrossed with canals, providing another habitat for gators.  It's not common to come across an alligator as you go about your daily business, but when you do happen to see one, it's not unusual, either.

New Orleanians and gators co-exist pretty peacefully most of the time.  Every now and then a gator will become a nuisance to pets or people, and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries will send a licensed gator hunter out to trap or kill the animal.  BTW, alligator hunting is illegal in Louisiana (except during gator season, and then can only be done by hunters with permission from LDWF), so you can't just shoot a gator if he shows up in your backyard.

The first Hurricane Ida gator story does not have a happy ending, but I include it because it's so unusual.  After the storm, a man was killed and eaten by a gator.  This happened in a more rural part of a New Orleans suburb, but it could've happened anywhere around here.  I'll leave out the details because they're not pleasant (the story is easily Googled), but it's just very atypical for a gator to attack a human.  The LDWF did eventually hunt down the gator - he turned out to be 12 feet long!

The other story is already legendary in New Orleans - the memes are endless and I've seen t-shirts and stickers commemorating the event.

First, a bit of a timeline.

 

Not long after the hurricane passed, this picture started making the rounds on social media.  It's pizza dough that was discarded in a dumpster as the storm approached.  Once the storm passed, the heat and humidity worked its magic on the discarded dough, which overflowed the dumpster.  Stressful times call for humor, and this image spawned all kinds of jokes and memes.

 

A few days later, yet another dumpster picture started making the rounds.  This one involved a large dead alligator tossed into a demolition dumpster in an uptown New Orleans neighborhood.  No one seems to know where the gator came from, but speculation is someone shot him illegally and disposed of him in the chaos after the storm.

 

Again, the jokes and memes have made the rounds, and I'm sure this image will show up again as part of a float when Mardi Gras rolls around!

 

 

 

Cleaning and Stitching

Happy Autumn Equinox!  (OK, I'm a few days late, but does it really matter if fall is truly in the air?!) 

When last we spoke, I was in Florida, waiting for the effects of Hurricane Ida to subside enough so I could go home.

We stayed in Florida for almost a week, then returned to our camp in Mississippi.  Our camp home was undamaged and never even lost power.  However, due to rain and storm surge, we had about two feet of flooding from the tidal inlet our house sits next to.  Once the water went down, we drove back and commenced cleaning up the mess.

Our camp is meant for outdoor living, so we have lots of patio and decking space.  Everything under the house was covered with a layer of dried silt, with another layer of mold/mildew underneath.  As you can see, the floodwaters moved our rolling planters, and pushed the veggie planters right off the deck!

The decking closest to the water had the most silt, while the grass and fig tree were covered with it, too.

Just like everyone else in the neighborhood, the power washer was our friend!

It took DH and I several days to get everything cleaned up and set right.

Ten days after Hurricane Ida hit, our power was restored in New Orleans.  We were able to return to an undamaged house and do more clean up!  Our neighborhood has lots of huge Live Oak trees, so there was leaf and limb debris all over. 

Although New Orleans is well on the road to recovery at this point, things aren't so rosy for the areas of the state that experienced the eye of the hurricane.  Thousands of people have been left homeless by the storm, with little housing relief in sight.  Local charities are stepping up to help, and if you're interested in contributing, I wholeheartedly recommend The Greater New Orleans Foundation and/or Second Harvest Food Bank.  Both organizations have been around for years, make excellent use of their financial resources, and serve the entire hurricane-affected area. 

 

OK, I do have some quilt-related content!

I have managed to work on a few things, although I'm struggling to stay focused on any one project for long. 

I started playing with these blocks after returning home, but as easy as the blocks are, I haven't made much progress.

I saw the pattern demonstrated on a Missouri Star Quilt Company "Triple Play" video.  Jenny Doan made her blocks using pre-cut 5-inch squares of 1930s style repro fabrics.  The Flying Geese blocks are made from HSTs.  When I saw her blocks, I immediately thought of a fat quarter bundle that had been aging in my stash.  Instead of cutting the FQs into squares, I just cut 4.5-inch strips and used the Easy Angle ruler to cut my HST pairs.  There are about 25 fabrics in the FQ bundle that will wind up going into the quilt.  I've worked through most of the red and orange fabrics - the rest are green and aqua, with a little gray thrown in.

 

Sorry for the yucky picture - I'm beginning to wonder if I need a new camera.  Or maybe I should give up on the camera and just use my phone!

 

 

Hurricane Ida Update and August Sort-of Mini

Hi Fellow Quilters!  I wrote the post below several days ago and planned to use the auto-post feature to publish it today.  That was before we evacuated ahead of Hurricane Ida.  

After securing our home in New Orleans and our camp in Mississippi, we loaded our vehicles with the usual evacuation goodies and headed for my mom's house in Florida.  We left in the very early hours of Saturday morning, so we missed all the traffic jams you may have seen on TV.

Several friends opted to stay behind and ride out the storm in the New Orleans area.  We have been in constant touch with them through text messages and social media.  Everyone we know has weathered the storm OK, although they're a little shell-shocked by the length and intensity of the storm.  As the roads get cleared of debris and downed power lines, we're hopeful someone will be able to check on our house.

Per the electric company outage map, our camp in Mississippi apparently still has power.  We know from our neighbor's outdoor camera that water came up under the house, but since the water is still rising, we don't know the extent of the flood damage.  Our camp is elevated about 17 feet off the ground on pilings, and our whole yard is about 7 feet above the river.  Probably only a couple of feet of flooding, but it will be a mess to clean up!

As of this morning, almost the entire state is doing damage assessment.  The areas passed over by the eye of the hurricane will be heavily damaged; I'm hopeful there will not be great loss of life as well.  New Orleans had "catastrophic" damage to major power lines, so the entire city is without power (except for those with generators).  It's going to be a long road to recovery, but thank goodness the levees didn't fail (at least that we know of!) and the city won't have post-Katrina type flooding.  

We are still in watchful waiting mode.  Without power it will be difficult to live in our New Orleans home, but we may be able to live at our camp.  Time will tell.

For anyone interested, I'm sure there will soon be lots of information coming through on how you can help with storm recovery efforts.  I'll be happy to share that information as it becomes available.

And on a happier note, one of our family friends has a front-page byline in the New York Times this morning!  I don't know if the Times is dropping their paywall for coverage of Hurricane Ida, but here's the link if you're interested.  

OK, yes, there's some fabric-related content here.  I didn't actually finish an August mini this month, but I did stitch up two bags.  Not exactly quilt-related, but it's all I got!

I have a small stash of Tula Pink's Hushabye fabrics.  I originally used them to make a baby quilt, and wound up with a fair number of scrappy chunks.  They don't really play well with other fabrics, so the scraps haven't gotten used up.

I had cut and prepped the fabrics for Sotak Handmade's Devon Pouch last fall, but came to a screeching halt when I didn't have the right size zippers on hand.  While I waited for zippers to arrive from Zipit, the project got pushed aside.  

One day this week provided the perfect opportunity to assemble the pouch, and following the great pattern instructions I quickly finished the project.

I love the owl figure in the pink and brown fabric!  This will go into the gift-giving bin.  

Just playing with the Hushabye scraps gave me some new ideas for using them up - hopefully it won't take me a year to cut into them.  

I've mentioned before I have a large bin full of worn and raggedy denim jeans.  I recently cut up some of them to make Rail Fence blocks, but there's still quite a bit of denim waiting to be used.

I had some big chunks of khaki and black denim, so I used them to make a large tote bag.  The finished bag measures approximately 19" x 16".  No pattern, I just looked at a favorite tote bag and used what I know about bag construction to make my own design.

I only used supplies on hand, so the handles are denim (as opposed to webbing) and the thread is 40wt cotton/poly.  I'd go with a heavier thread next time so the topstitching shows up better.

I didn't want a lining in the bag, so that meant no fusible interfacing on the denim.  The bag turned out soft and kinda floppy, which is great for folding and stashing it when empty.  

I also didn't want to wrestle with hemming the top opening of the bag, so I used bias fabric strips as a hem facing.  

Now I've got a sturdy tote bag for taking quilting projects on the road!