Number 10

 

Well, here we are about half way through the Chookshed Challenge and I'm still in it!  I haven't abandoned it in frustration and pressure.  I think it's because I chose things for the most part that needed finishing so I wasn't starting new.

 Number ten was drawn and this is my number ten, the early pre-settlement map of Lowell. It is meant to be a companion to the street map I did a few years ago but I put this aside when I got stumped. But now I think I can come to terms with it.  And there is hope for it now because I can sit in my spot out on the porch and work on it. 

Look how wrinkled it is!  I pulled it from it's little project box this morning and laid it out for this photo. It will get more crinkled as I work on it so no, I am not ironing it now.

When I was cooking this idea in my brain the background fabric was super important because there was going to be so much of it showing.  I found this on a website and it was absolutely perfect. It showed the natural wildlife the Native Americans lived with and I didn't have to applique a representative of them.  Deer, rabbits, squirrels, and the flora is all in there. I need a bear, though.  It was perfect.  I am appliqueing the pumpkins under a stalk of corn, which I am using beads for and somehow will represent beans. 

Loved what I found for the canoes - and it was in my stash! Here, the Native homes were dome shaped and made of bark. 

So, because this is a very portable project I can spend my afternoons on the porch and actually might get it done.

This is my street map of Lowell, photo shows quilt unfinished but you get the idea. My number ten challenge for this month is the time of pre-settlement. 

I've said it maybe a dozen times that I just can't be inside on a nice, sunny, warm day.  Even if I am 'only' sitting out there reading I can't justify being inside because Michigan isn't heavy on warm sunny days.  Winters are long.  The other day I brought the cranky out on the porch, set up the daffodil blocks and got them all sewed and cut.  It was an afternoon among the birds and sunshine and I made some progress.  These little HSTs now are almost all ironed open and I will take the machine out again on a nice day and build them into daffodils.  I don't think I will ever be sorry I bought this crank machine.