Solstice, almost
G'day all!
Long time no blog. And I am soooo happy that we are nearly at solstice because the gloom is starting to get to me. Sunset at 4:18pm is much much too early. And the sun only rises at around 7:45am if it can be bothered. Some days we don't actually see any sun at all - it just stays grey and dim all day long, like living in twilight.
It's been truly flat chat around here. Late November I was making a quilt to enter into a quilt show - didn't get in but mine joins the other 75% of rejected quilts. I'd show you pics of it but I don't have good ones of the back yet.
Ah heck, lets show you some pics of parts of the front. I don't have good shots of the back - every time it is clear and sunny here at the moment, I'm busy doing things other than taking pics of quilts! But I do have to hurry up and get shots because I'm donating it before Christmas, which leaves me very little time indeed!
So I'm a member of the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild. The Modern Quilt Guild is having challenges every few months where a fabric manufacturer supplies fat eighths of fabic (you know what a half yard of fabric is, well a fat quarter is what happens if you cut half a yard down the middle of the fabric and is about 22" by 18", and a fat eighth is half of a fat quarter).
The last challenge I made quilted cushion covers, as seen in this post.
This time around I made a nice little quilt. Michael Miller is promoting their fairly new range of Cotton Coutures. The bundle they supplied were the Spring colours - those you see above plus white. I didn't use any of the white on the front of the quilt.
I got the idea for the pinwheels from my friend Dana's book, Imagine Quilts. (You can get signed copies from Dana's website, or buy unsigned from your local quilt shop, the publisher or Amazon.) I made up some slightly wonky Dresden Plates then machine appliqued down the two smaller ones (they are about ten inches wide I guess). The big one is about twenty inches across and umm it was quite wonky, so I hand appliqued it down! Then I quilted them madly - zigzags down the colour rays and "sine" waves in between them, then zigzaggy flames in the spaces where they start meeting. It is a bit of a challenge on my normal size sewing machine but it gets the job done with a minimum of fuss (as long as I remember to put the foot down to engage the tension! Oops!) and maximum of noise.
I'd show you the back but I don't yet have one single pic of it - that is why it hasn't been donated yet. I pieced it and it looks pretty amazing if I say so myself.
So that quilt ate every last spare minute of the last ten days or so of November.
November also finished rather cold and clear. We got some snow!
Our street is oh so pretty in snow - we have some lovely Craftsman type houses on it. Plus that morning DH got me up to make sure I saw sunrise.
It was a bit of a winter, milky sunrise but that was ok, it was very pretty in person, the phone just washed it out totally.
It also brought with it dry, polar air that kept the place close to freezing for several days, and gave us some nice sunsets.
December? Where has December gone? I've been flat chat this month too! I thought I had everything under control, we had managed to absorb much of the stuff DH had brought out of storage (hooray, our friend now has her spare room back!) and then DH decided it was time to fix up the built in wardrobes.
You would not believe how much work there is in a roughly 2.2 metre by 2.2 metre by most of a metre space. We have made beautiful shelves for the study/second bedroom - I even did some routing and I most definitely helped with the table sawing of the whole set. A few coats of gloss paint and they are looking really good. We've been cutting and placing plasterboard (drywall or blueboard) over the last few days to tidy up the holes around the shelves and now we are working on our bedroom's side.
I've been crafting other stuff as well but more on that when I have pictures of the things I've made. It is really difficult to get good shots when the days end at around 4pm and you realise you forgot to get shots whilst you had some degree of daylight.
Hopefully I'll be back soon with more on what's been happening in December. It truly has not stopped. MiL and FiL arrive on Tuesday so we have to get a wriggle on with our wardrobe fixing up!
anon!
Long time no blog. And I am soooo happy that we are nearly at solstice because the gloom is starting to get to me. Sunset at 4:18pm is much much too early. And the sun only rises at around 7:45am if it can be bothered. Some days we don't actually see any sun at all - it just stays grey and dim all day long, like living in twilight.
It's been truly flat chat around here. Late November I was making a quilt to enter into a quilt show - didn't get in but mine joins the other 75% of rejected quilts. I'd show you pics of it but I don't have good ones of the back yet.
Ah heck, lets show you some pics of parts of the front. I don't have good shots of the back - every time it is clear and sunny here at the moment, I'm busy doing things other than taking pics of quilts! But I do have to hurry up and get shots because I'm donating it before Christmas, which leaves me very little time indeed!
 |
| Note the direction the needle is headed on the applique |
So I'm a member of the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild. The Modern Quilt Guild is having challenges every few months where a fabric manufacturer supplies fat eighths of fabic (you know what a half yard of fabric is, well a fat quarter is what happens if you cut half a yard down the middle of the fabric and is about 22" by 18", and a fat eighth is half of a fat quarter).
 |
| Insane quilting |
The last challenge I made quilted cushion covers, as seen in this post.
 |
| Quilting quilting quilting |
This time around I made a nice little quilt. Michael Miller is promoting their fairly new range of Cotton Coutures. The bundle they supplied were the Spring colours - those you see above plus white. I didn't use any of the white on the front of the quilt.
 |
| Colour skewed but shows it is bound! |
I got the idea for the pinwheels from my friend Dana's book, Imagine Quilts. (You can get signed copies from Dana's website, or buy unsigned from your local quilt shop, the publisher or Amazon.) I made up some slightly wonky Dresden Plates then machine appliqued down the two smaller ones (they are about ten inches wide I guess). The big one is about twenty inches across and umm it was quite wonky, so I hand appliqued it down! Then I quilted them madly - zigzags down the colour rays and "sine" waves in between them, then zigzaggy flames in the spaces where they start meeting. It is a bit of a challenge on my normal size sewing machine but it gets the job done with a minimum of fuss (as long as I remember to put the foot down to engage the tension! Oops!) and maximum of noise.
I'd show you the back but I don't yet have one single pic of it - that is why it hasn't been donated yet. I pieced it and it looks pretty amazing if I say so myself.
So that quilt ate every last spare minute of the last ten days or so of November.
November also finished rather cold and clear. We got some snow!
 |
| Snow in November |
Our street is oh so pretty in snow - we have some lovely Craftsman type houses on it. Plus that morning DH got me up to make sure I saw sunrise.
It was a bit of a winter, milky sunrise but that was ok, it was very pretty in person, the phone just washed it out totally.
The interesting thing about this snow is that as the day wore on, the weather cleared more and more but... it stayed close to freezing, so the snow did not melt.
It also brought with it dry, polar air that kept the place close to freezing for several days, and gave us some nice sunsets.
 |
| Once was snow, now more like ice. |
 |
| My baby had icicles on him! |
 |
| Yet some of the trees still had leaves. And see that blue blue sky! Lovely! |
 |
| I had to wear my snow boots to the beach/ to keep my feet even slightly warm. |
 |
| But the sunset was lovely :-) |
December? Where has December gone? I've been flat chat this month too! I thought I had everything under control, we had managed to absorb much of the stuff DH had brought out of storage (hooray, our friend now has her spare room back!) and then DH decided it was time to fix up the built in wardrobes.
You would not believe how much work there is in a roughly 2.2 metre by 2.2 metre by most of a metre space. We have made beautiful shelves for the study/second bedroom - I even did some routing and I most definitely helped with the table sawing of the whole set. A few coats of gloss paint and they are looking really good. We've been cutting and placing plasterboard (drywall or blueboard) over the last few days to tidy up the holes around the shelves and now we are working on our bedroom's side.
 |
| The shelves are actually as close to square as we can get them in a non-square house. |
I've been crafting other stuff as well but more on that when I have pictures of the things I've made. It is really difficult to get good shots when the days end at around 4pm and you realise you forgot to get shots whilst you had some degree of daylight.
Hopefully I'll be back soon with more on what's been happening in December. It truly has not stopped. MiL and FiL arrive on Tuesday so we have to get a wriggle on with our wardrobe fixing up!
anon!
Oh good, I was beiggining to worry about you. I shouldv'e know you were in your winter hibernation mode. Your little quilt is really fun, I love the crazy quilting!! Did you like the courture cottons? From my warm weathered part of the world your photos look so beautiful and exotic in a snowy way. You've got a knack of finding good sunsets. Your new storage is looking good. I bet those sheves will hold a lot of things. Happy Solstice to you Lynne!!
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