Lily and I are working hard on finishing her two quilt blocks for The Long Winter before school starts next week. We had hoped to make all the blocks this summer but obviously, that isn’t going to happen!  She has three more books to read.  We are hoping she can read one a month and finish two blocks a month for the next three months and then I can help her sash and quilt it in December and over Christmas vacation.  We are setting this goal because our librarian asked to have her quilt on display at the library in January if she can have it done in time.  That’s pretty exciting for her so we are going to try to make it!

In The Long Winter, the Ingalls family suffers through 7 months of unimaginable winter weather with blizzard after blizzard with only a day or two of bitter cold sunshine in-between.  The trains stop running so they are out of coal and food.  They see no one but their own family and Laura often comments about how lonely it is and that she feels like they are all alone in the world.  At first, Lily and I thought of making a snowflake.  It seemed an obvious choice but designing an easy snowflake pattern is pretty tricky.  Then it came to me, as we were reading, we could make a window with snow.  Laura often runs to the window to look for an approaching storm if Pa is out getting hay.  During storms, she will go to the window and comment that she can see nothing but whirling snow, no buildings, no people, no light.  So we made the wooden walls of their building in town with a whirling snowstorm outside.

I read The Long Winter aloud to the whole family.  I started reading it on the car ride home from our vacation and a few hours into it, everyone was hooked.  So we finished this book by reading a few chapters after dinner each night. Lily has determined that she is going to read the next book all by herself, Little Town on the Prairie.  In the meantime, we have one more Long Winter block to design and sew.

Here are the cutting instructions for this block:

I hope you are all enjoying the Sew Along. I love seeing the pictures that pop up on IG with the hashtag #littlehousealong.  I have heard that a few of you are set to start sewing along this fall. Lily and I are excited to see  your blocks!