Red, Black and Mice All Over

Hole blocks

In 2007, our book club read "Jump Off Creek," by Molly Glass. The story is about a female homesteader in the 1890s that settles in southern Oregon. I was inspired by the passage in the book where she arrives at her cabin, but, finds two men squatting in her dirt floor shack. (She definitely was sold a different bill of goods!!!)

She kicks out the men, pulls in her bedroll to sleep and it rains. Water drips on her because there are holes in the roof and there are mice running all over.

I had won a couple sets of blocks through the guild. One set was "holes" and the other set was mice. Even better, the colors were red, black, and neutral. Of course, there weren't enough blocks once I figured out a layout; but, it wasn't hard to make a few more!!!

View of the quilting on the back

The mice blocks are cute. The ears are three dimensional and I embroidered each tail. I made a bunch more of these blocks. I purchased the black fabric. I used scraps for the rest of the project.

I only had a fat quarter of the flower print; but, I managed to use it all! I used it because the character planted some flower seeds outside her cabin.

Label

I did purchase a yard of green fabric that had tree trunks on it when I was getting inspired about what to stitch. That fabric didn't make it into this quilt; but, I did use it as inspiration for the quilting.

In the story, the character expects to find timber on her land. . .well, the previous owner logged most of it and left huge stumps behind. She labored to remove the stumps so she could grow vegetables.

I chalked lines to represent the tree trunks and used a light thread to quilt it from the back. I did have to plan carefully so that I didn't stitch any mouse ears!

I made piping and inserted it into the binding. I finished this quilt in 2008 and it is "modern" enough to appear that I could have finished it more recently.

It was a fun way to use those blocks that I had won and it was the first time that I combined white background blocks with creme background blocks.

Quilt front