COMPLETING THE QUILTS. aka Carry On Quilting.

    The February block was finished late last night, or I should say, early this morning.     I loose track of time when I'm stitching. I've been binge watching a British comedy show this last week or so called  Benidorm. On first look I didn't think I would last more than 3 or 4 episodes, but today I start on season 9 which appears to be the last season.  Its been very entertaining. Oh woe, oh woe, what will I watch next?          I'm considering if I should include some sashiko type quilting on these TQ22 blocks. I'm giving some thought as to what and where.      Here's the pair of them so far.       I'm not going to join them together yet, as it will be easier to hand quilt them.

   Well, it's just after lunch on Saturday and I've finished the construction of the first month of my TQ22. It looks like a place mat at this point. It's 15.5 inches wide and 13.5 inches high.     I'll do some quilting on it and embroider the month on it to finish it off. I'm going to indicate significant dates like birthdays and anniversaries with a bead.     The blocks are going to be joined together 3 across and 4 down. It's going to turn out bigger than I would would like for a wall hanging but I'm sure I'll find somewhere to hang it eventually. When I get the furniture moved back to where I originally had it, there might be space big enough on one wall.  We moved the furniture and took up the rug when My Darling became disabled so it was safer for him to move about. It's a big job for me to put it all back.   11 more to go. Better get going on February now.

I'm back at it.  This time its KISS. Using my Baby GoCutter.  2" Half square triangles cause I just happened to have that die. Did another colour run set out slightly different than before but I forgot to take a photo.  I'm pinning them to paper as I go. The final layout will be as the calendar page is arranged with selected print fabrics to fill in the blanks.  This is flying along now.  Easy Peasy!!! See that odd one out in there. The blue/blue.  That day was a 'cold snap' in the middle of our summer. It went from 12c° to 15c°. Most unusual. There allways days that start out low but they usually manage to get over that 20s mark. Of course this set the 'winter haters' off moaning and groaning.  There's a couple more low low morning temps coming up in Feb. 9s and 10s but the days then warmed up nicely.  All in all, it's not been the stinking hot summer that we usually have. At least not here in New South Wales. Western Australia has been havi...

NOT liking this. Not liking it at all.  I think it looks awful and I don't think it's going to improve with continuing.     Running top to bottom is the first three days of January and February. The whole process of quilt as you go elongated hexagons divided diagonally is labour intensive, full on fiddle-faddle. And even this early on, in stitching those six units together, I can see I am not going to be able to handle the bulk of the project as it progresses. My hands just don't work that way. That's happened in the past with English paper piecing projects, so I should have known better that to attempt this again even though these shapes are 'soft' and more malleable.     My choice of backing fabrics, while beautiful in themselves, just don't work like I imagined they would.    I'm going to have to rethink this whole project. I still love the idea of a temperature quilt but . . . . ?.?.?.?     I'm going to go do some sashiko and le...

I have a colour-run of 28 fabrics laid out on the ironing board, . . . finally. BUT, have a del-lemma. Let me solicit your assistance. Do I break down temps by 2 degrees and go with 24-25 fabrics. Or Do I breakdown the temps by 3 degrees and go with 17-18 colours? I really can't make up my mind. And how do I catalogue/file the fabrics? What do you all do? The only idea I can come up with is pinning a letter and the degrees it covers on to each and stacking it all in a crate. I've decided to go with 10 weather descriptions for the backgrounds. Lighter prints for the nicer weather and darker prints for the not so nice. I have 14 to choose the 10 from. Decisions, decisions, decisions! I better pull my finger out, I've got more than a month now to catch up on.  

   All the fabrics have arrived. I still have to choose what colour will represent each 3 degrees of temperature, and which aboriginal prints will represent the weather conditions. Can't do that in poor light so will wait until daylight tomorrow.    Choosing colours is not my strong point so I'm going to follow a 17 colour chart I found on the web for the temps. So pleased someone else has taken the anguish and indecision out of it for me. Tonight I'll do a web search to see if I can find a similar chart for the background weather - I live in hope.    I still have to decide how many weather conditions I will include. Like, do I really need 'light rain' and 'light patchy rain', 'stormy' and 'thunder and lightning'. I thinking will go with what is recorded for the midday weather condition.    One decision made so far is that mist and fog will be combined, as will frost, snow and sleet. We get quite a bit of morning fog/mist here, not that I see...

I've done a few samples, experimenting with different waddings, fold sequence, etc. It's all been very fiddly and has  aggravated the arthritis in hands, arms, and shoulders to a point every I thought the whole thing may not have been such a good idea after all.   But, taking into consideration that I will not be doing more than two or three at a time once I have caught up with what days have already gone by, I have decided to continue. I don't think it's going to be as good looking as a finished article as I imagined it would be. I may divide the centre of the block diagonally. Vertical or horizontal just doesn't look right to me. And I'm having second thoughts about the aboriginal prints for the background/border fabric.  If I didn't want to persist with the QAYG method, I would probably change to Drunkards Path blocks as its one of my favourite blocks and I have a 3.5" die to cut them. But then I'd be looking at a full sized quilt, and not someth...

Ive decided I'll make a Temperature quilt this year. This project will slot in amongst shasiko stitching small projects and a few full size quilts I have here, cut and ready to go. For this Celsius temperature quilt I'm doing quilt-as-you-go lozenges. Probably 3.5" or 4.5" max across from point to point.  They will be stacked on their long side in columns. One column per month. It will be a wall hanging. The center of the lozenge will be split in half, low left and high right. I'm using a selection of 17 solid colour fabrics for the centers with a 3 degree breakdown, and 7 aboriginal prints for the backings. I'm awaiting delivery of the fabric and then I will have to go flat out for a couple of days to catch up.  Big photos. I haven't worked out how to make them smaller yet. There doesn't seem to be a way to do it while composing a blog post.