Native plant: Anacahuita

Hello, everyone.

For a change, a couple of pictures of a native small tree in our area:

The glorious blooms of the anacahuita tree. 

 If there is no freeze, this tree can be in bloom all year long. It produces a whitish fruit, about the size of a large olive, which has a husk. Ground squirrels eat the seeds, I hear, and if not the tree will produce many, many little trees where the fruit fell to the ground.

Another name for Anacahuita is Wild Olive. This is because of the resemblance of the fruits to olives. It is not actually an olive tree, as you can see by its leaves.

At Rancho Lomitas, up the road a ways from here, the naturalist Benito Trevino has made a fascinating video that, in part, discusses the uses of the Anacahuita fruits.

Block play: boats and boots

Hello, everyone.

Yesterday there was a lot of block play in different colors.

A single-masted boat.

 After assembly, I decided there is not enough contrast between the hull and the sky and the water.

Double-masted boat. 4" block, unless I add more around the sides.

 Tried again, using a less-busy "sky" fabric and a darker "wood" hull. Aggie Maroon for the sails, too!

The current boot block collection: 6" blocks.

The oldest boot block is on top. The colors are OK but there are a lot of seams that aren't really needed.
The next one is on the right: one less seam. Jury is still out whether the peafowl feathers are too busy a background. (They certainly didn't look right for the boot itself!)
Most recent is on the bottom. Aggie Maroon boot, mottled warm-gray background, and the blue blender for the heel. I think the less-busy background works better.
Might try a rearrangement of the seams one more time with the next one: there is availability for a half-square triangle to be the vamp and toe of the boot, instead of the stacking diagonal seams. The diagonals are somewhat tricky to line up and it's taking too much time.

The Rocket Block, new version

Hello, everyone.

The rocket block has been prototyped already.

Today's block is a modification of the basic block, to fit a 4 x 8 spot in the baby quilt.

Trying a different way to make the nose cone

 I did get a little bit forgetful while lining up the bits and pieces to make this block. At the end, the nose cone row was too wide. But all the excess was in the blue sky fabric, so no problem.

Here I drew a stitching line on the lighter fabric--love those automatic pencils for this!--and sewed a piece of sky into place. Press, trim, and good to go.

The main rocket body here, with the top part of the fins.

 The main rocket body is 3 inches tall. The fins reach below the base--obviously, this rocket is what is left after jettisoning the first stage.

The flame from the rocket engine.

 The flame was just going to be basically house-shaped, but there were these little bitty triangles lying around, and real rocket flames aren't shaped like houses. So I stuck the tiny triangles onto the other corners of the red piece. (The top corners here were done "snowball fashion", that is, a square was sewn onto the corner of a larger square. After pressing, the same was repeated on the adjacent corner of the larger square.)

And our intrepid astronauts are on the way to someplace!

A note on the quilt: after making the navy and gray plane, I concluded that it was too dark and dull for a baby quilt. Babies like brights! So instead of navy, the darker backgrounds will be more like this one.

Native plant, but not in South Texas

Hello, everyone.

When we were in Illinois, I was struck by this plant we saw at Pere Marquette State Park.

This is a mayapple.  Actually, either a pair or the start of a clump! This was along the walking path on a hill.

It's possible that mayapples grow in East Texas, but down here there is neither enough water nor, I suspect, enough winter chilling.

Just for pretty: flower and landscape

Hello, everyone.

Wild passionflower (native plant in South Texas)

Ranchlands of Starr County, Texas

Today's new block: an airplane

Hello, everyone.

After whipping out the little windmill yesterday, I decided to try something more complicated. This is my first time for this block, and it went reasonably well.

Here is how it went together:

Plane color: gray

Background color: navy

Measurements in inches. To convert to metric, multiply inches by 2.54.

8x8 Plane block     

Overall plan: have a base of 2 x 2 squares. Add corner bits as needed for diagonal seams, as in Snowball block. Instructions are based upon creating sub-unit squares and joining them to make the whole block. No inside corner seams are used.

The diagram of the block. 

Nose tip and tail tip:

Cut 1 each: 1 7/8 x 1 7/8 in background and in plane. (This will produce 2 Half Square Triangle  (HST) squares.)

Mark diagonals on lighter fabric, place on darker fabric with right sides together, and sew 1/4" away on each side of the drawn line for 2 half square triangles. Cut the sewn triangles apart along the diagonal line. Press them and trim "ears." (These will be the airplane propeller) 

Cut 1: 1.5 x 2.5 piece in background color.

Cut 2: 1.5 square pieces in background color.

Cut 2: 1.5 square pieces of airplane.

For the tail tip, join 1 plane 1.5 square and 1 background 1.5 square to make a rectangle. Press.  Join unit to 1.5 x 2.5 background piece. Press. Square up.

For the nose tip, join 1 HST and 1 background 1.5 square. Press. Join 1 HST and 1 plane 1.5 square. (Note that the plane-colored triangle points away from the plane-colored square.) Press. Lay out the rectangles so 1 HST + background will be on top and 1 plane + HST will be on bottom. Join to form a square with the HST pieces diagonally across from each other. (See the diagram.) The color of the propeller should be on the upper part of the HST. Press. Square up.

For tail wings and rear fuselage:

Cut 3: 2.5 x 2.5 pieces in plane.

Cut 6: 1.5 x 1.5 pieces in background. Sew background pieces to opposite corners of plane pieces.

Join tail tip to one wing piece. Join other wing piece to rear fuselage piece. Press all. Join wing-fuselage piece to tail-wing piece. Press. Square up.

For front wings and front fuselage:

Cut 4: 2.5 x 2.5 pieces in background.  

Cut 8: 1.5 x 1.5 pieces in plane.

Sew plane colored pieces to two “top” corners of background pieces. The diagonal seams should meet in the middle of the background piece edge. Press and square up.

Cut 3: 2.5 x 2.5 pieces of plane.

Cut 4: 1.5 x 1.5 pieces of background. As with the rear fuselage, sew the background pieces onto opposite corners of 2 plane pieces. (Third plane piece is fine as it is.)

Join 1 mostly-background piece to one mostly-plane piece. Top right plane colored corner of larger background piece should adjoin the top left corner of larger plane colored piece, creating right wingtip. Press and square up.

Cut 2: 2.5 x 4.5 pieces in background color. 

Join the right-wing rectangle just created to one of the 4.5 x 2.5 background pieces. Press and square up.

Join this square to the tail square. Press and square up.

Repeat this step in mirrorwise fashion: Join left wingtip piece to background piece with top left plane colored corner of background piece adjacent to bottom right corner of wingtip piece. Press and square up. Join unit to second 4.5 x 2.5 background piece, press, and square up.

Join third plane colored square (the one with no odd colored corners) to background piece with the plane colored corners adjacent to the unadorned square. Press and square up.

Join nose section to last background piece with plane colored corner square adjacent to plane colored triangle and HST adjacent to unadorned part of background square. Press and square up.

Join front fuselage section to nose tip section. Unadorned plane colored square is on left bottom of new square. Press and square up.

Join this square to left wing square. Press and square up.

Join with tail section rectangle. Press and square up.

Another new block for me: windmill

Hello, everyone.

This will be just a short post. The baby quilt will have some 2" x 4" blocks in between the larger ones, so today's block was an experiment in making something that size.

It's a simple little windmill, made of a 2" x 2" pinwheel for the top part and a square with angled roof for the bottom part.

It may or may not eventually get a little door, just to further the resemblance to a windmill.

It did use up a collection of half-square triangles that had been originally put together for the heart block, but left unused.

Stash busting for the win!