The Saga of the 2-1/2" Squares ~ Part 2

Dan here ~

After ORDER IN CHAOS was created life became a barrier in my constant quilting. The packing and moving of two houses in Rangeley and the construction process that was described here kept me out of the sewing room. Why you ask? There was no sewing room as it was a construction mess.

Once we again had a sewing area, I went back and looked at the 2-1/2” scrap bin and decided that I would continue with the process of eliminating them and seeing if it was possible to clean out the bin of scraps. So, as I attempted to get back into the rhythm of quilting I continued to make nine-patch units. See my stack in progress to the right of my machine?

I left a lot of the parts as just two scraps together thinking maybe they would turn into four- patch units instead of nine.

Then the sledding debacle of 2020 happened. While sliding on the hill on old runner sleds on our road with a couple of the grandkids, guess who was the one to fall off the sled? You guessed it ~ me. For background ~ when I was about 6 or 7 years old,  while sliding on the crust behind my childhood home, I attempted to slide down on my knees. When the sled broke through the crust, quite naturally I was thrown forward, and as I recall I got cut up some from the crust. Well back to the sledding debacle of 2020 ~ I couldn’t get the sled to go, started to go down on my tummy, then decided at the last minute that maybe that was not a method that was a good idea to show the kids. The sled was moving, I hopped on on my knees. I was about half way down the hill and began to have flashbacks to sledding incidents of my youth (kinda like the expression, seeing your life flash before you) and realized that when I reached the bottom, which was coming up on me quite quickly, I would probably get thrown off. About that time I went flying over the front of the sled, landed on my shoulder and heard an enormous CRACK! And the pain....oh the pain. Long story short, after a trip to the ER to be informed I had broken my collarbone I was sent home to camp out in the recliner for the next 100 nights. This all happened about 2 weeks before the pandemic struck.

Here are the Grands ~ they were having a blast!

This brings me back to the quilt story. Sleeping on the recliner, I was having a difficult time keeping a quilt over me during the night. I would wake up and it was on the floor. I tried folding quilt in half, nope too hot, it was on floor. I tried a single layer quilt, too big and it would be on the floor. 

Realizing I was going insane lying on the recliner all the time I figured I would try to sew. Did a few things a little differently, for instance I could not lift the iron with my right arm but could press once iron was lying flat, so I would place iron flat, press with my bad arm, raise iron with my left again. I was glad I sew on a machine that did not require me to raise and lower the presser foot as I could not raise my arm that high. 

I decided I would make me a recliner quilt and the first of my Rona quilts was born. Get it? Rona quilt, short for CaRona virus. What I came up with was a 71” x 41” quilt. Long enough to go over my feet when pulled up to my chin but narrow enough I could easily tuck it in on both sides to keep in place. It worked great. 

In this quilt I used more of the nine-patch blocks and again separated the blocks with sashing strips and cornerstones. I kept the sashing strips simple and used the same width as the squares in the 9 patch blocks. For cornerstones I decided on a common two color square in a square unit to add pop and interest to the quilt. 

Carol used the digitized pattern Spring Flowers as the quilting design.

Rona 1 was born.

Stay tuned ~ the Rona 2 story on Monday!