My personal addiction to rainbows causes me to do things like this:
Yes, Spellcheck, I do mean to put the letter U in coloured. I am Canadian. Get used to it.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Promises
Last blog I promised pictures of the quilt I was making, and today when I sought out Google Images, there was the original image that had so impressed my mind.
My personal addiction to rainbows causes me to do things like this:
First, cutting up the fabric and sewing it together with the white squares:
Then laying it out on the living room floor. I will probably rearrange things a little bit, so there is more red and pink up in the top left corner. There will also be another column down the side, making it 5 columns wide, and I still have to make a few more coloured rectangle + white square units, but once I get them arranged the way I want to at the top, I will know which colours I need to use.
Yes, Spellcheck, I do mean to put the letter U in coloured. I am Canadian. Get used to it.
My personal addiction to rainbows causes me to do things like this:
Yes, Spellcheck, I do mean to put the letter U in coloured. I am Canadian. Get used to it.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Two sunny days in a row?
Normally, I would complain about the time change and what it does to my system. Lack of sleep, general grumpiness, inability to see straight, inability to cook or eat at the correct times ... you get the idea. But, for some unknown reason, the time change has mysteriously awakened the SPRING season in our area. Two whole days in a row with sunshine. Not the winter "blind you and make you wish for a cloudy day" sunshine, but the lovely "I think I will warm you up and make you take your coat off" kind of sunshine. Of course, this also results in forgetting my keys in my winter jacket, but still ... sunshine. Like meditating on chocolate. MMM!
My quilting friends are off to retreat and I haven't made anything new at home. So many ideas though! I started a quilt today that I have been thinking about since I first googled Jelly Roll quilts. Now that I am looking for it, I can't find it on Google Images, but I have looked at it enough times that I can describe it. It uses white squares and colourful rectangles. In the first row, there will be a white square and coloured rectangle, repeated 5 times across. In the second row, there will be a coloured rectangle and a white square, again repeated 5 times. These two rows repeat until there are 20 rows altogether. I'm planning to do it in rainbow colours and received a wonderful gift of a bright pink fabric lately. So the quilt will begin with pink, then go red, orange, yellow, green (1 or 2), blue (turquoise and a royal blue) and purple ... I went digging around my stash and my daughter's leftovers today and (re)discovered purples, blues, and my lovely yellow honeybee fabric. Time to raid my mother's stash for the orange and to check on the greens and turquoise and royal blue. In all, there will be 100 units of white squares/coloured rectangles (5 units across and 20 rows down). The only thing that I couldn't figure out from the photo on the Internet was what size to make the rectangle ... then I decided it was up to me. I liked a 1:3 ratio ... so I am working with a 3 inch square (which becomes 2.5 inches when sewn up) and my 3 x 2.5 inch long rectangle is cut at 8 inches.
So far I have 8 units of white with pink cut and sewn. I started with a 3 inch wide strip of white and attached it to an 8 inch strip of the pink, then cut 3 inch strips across. I would go do more sewing, but I am sure someone would wake up and complain (it's 11 pm). For that matter, I should probably think about bed, but it is hard to do that when quilts are dancing in one's head.
I have another quilt on the go, involving the alphabet. My aunt had begun appliqueing alphabet animals (A for Alligator, B for Bear, C for Cat ... something like that) on white squares. Unfortunately, she passed away four and a half years ago, and many projects were left undone, usually without a pattern or instructions. I had a little brainstorm one day, and decided to cover the exposed white fabric with a pastel in a rainbow colour. (You may notice that I am a little bit hooked on rainbows lately ... probably trying to dispel the winter blahs.) Since the animals are "on point" in the squares, I've basically been taking triangles of scrap pastel fabric and applying them around the animals. I'll take photos soon ... in daylight.
On the health front, after getting the okay from my surgeon in mid-February, I've been going to physiotherapy. It was exciting to see the X-ray with the image of the newly re-growing bone between the two broken edges. Physio is exhausting. Exhilarating but exhausting. I can't believe how a few stretching exercises, standing on my toes, balancing on a ball, and riding a recumbent exercise bike (for only 10 minutes) can wipe me out for the rest of the afternoon. So much for this sedentary lifestyle ... the muscles on my right leg have definitely been wasting away while the left, formerly the weaker leg, has become stronger. I'm also getting around with a cane instead of crutches or walker, and I've been cleared to drive again.
Quilting and physiotherapy may not seem to have much in common, but they contribute a great deal to my mental well-being. Add two sunny days to the package, and there's nothing one can do but SMILE!
Except that I just realized that the clock I looked at when I said it is 11 pm has not been changed to Daylight Savings Time yet ... I may be turning into a pumpkin soon.
My quilting friends are off to retreat and I haven't made anything new at home. So many ideas though! I started a quilt today that I have been thinking about since I first googled Jelly Roll quilts. Now that I am looking for it, I can't find it on Google Images, but I have looked at it enough times that I can describe it. It uses white squares and colourful rectangles. In the first row, there will be a white square and coloured rectangle, repeated 5 times across. In the second row, there will be a coloured rectangle and a white square, again repeated 5 times. These two rows repeat until there are 20 rows altogether. I'm planning to do it in rainbow colours and received a wonderful gift of a bright pink fabric lately. So the quilt will begin with pink, then go red, orange, yellow, green (1 or 2), blue (turquoise and a royal blue) and purple ... I went digging around my stash and my daughter's leftovers today and (re)discovered purples, blues, and my lovely yellow honeybee fabric. Time to raid my mother's stash for the orange and to check on the greens and turquoise and royal blue. In all, there will be 100 units of white squares/coloured rectangles (5 units across and 20 rows down). The only thing that I couldn't figure out from the photo on the Internet was what size to make the rectangle ... then I decided it was up to me. I liked a 1:3 ratio ... so I am working with a 3 inch square (which becomes 2.5 inches when sewn up) and my 3 x 2.5 inch long rectangle is cut at 8 inches.
So far I have 8 units of white with pink cut and sewn. I started with a 3 inch wide strip of white and attached it to an 8 inch strip of the pink, then cut 3 inch strips across. I would go do more sewing, but I am sure someone would wake up and complain (it's 11 pm). For that matter, I should probably think about bed, but it is hard to do that when quilts are dancing in one's head.
I have another quilt on the go, involving the alphabet. My aunt had begun appliqueing alphabet animals (A for Alligator, B for Bear, C for Cat ... something like that) on white squares. Unfortunately, she passed away four and a half years ago, and many projects were left undone, usually without a pattern or instructions. I had a little brainstorm one day, and decided to cover the exposed white fabric with a pastel in a rainbow colour. (You may notice that I am a little bit hooked on rainbows lately ... probably trying to dispel the winter blahs.) Since the animals are "on point" in the squares, I've basically been taking triangles of scrap pastel fabric and applying them around the animals. I'll take photos soon ... in daylight.
On the health front, after getting the okay from my surgeon in mid-February, I've been going to physiotherapy. It was exciting to see the X-ray with the image of the newly re-growing bone between the two broken edges. Physio is exhausting. Exhilarating but exhausting. I can't believe how a few stretching exercises, standing on my toes, balancing on a ball, and riding a recumbent exercise bike (for only 10 minutes) can wipe me out for the rest of the afternoon. So much for this sedentary lifestyle ... the muscles on my right leg have definitely been wasting away while the left, formerly the weaker leg, has become stronger. I'm also getting around with a cane instead of crutches or walker, and I've been cleared to drive again.
Quilting and physiotherapy may not seem to have much in common, but they contribute a great deal to my mental well-being. Add two sunny days to the package, and there's nothing one can do but SMILE!
Except that I just realized that the clock I looked at when I said it is 11 pm has not been changed to Daylight Savings Time yet ... I may be turning into a pumpkin soon.
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