Sunday Stretch For Sewists #16 - Caterpillar

Here we are at the end of January, and everyone seems to be saying, "Wow, how did that happen?" Well, it did and it's time for a Sunday stretch and this one is a good 'un. 

This is a teaser for another post, but the geese here, which are called Migrating Geese, flow, much like a caterpillar, across a quilt, don't they?!

Caterpillar is a bit deeper of a forward bend than Butterfly which we did last month.  It's basically the Dangling Pose done sitting down; in fact, if you suffer from high blood pressure, then you want to avoid Dangling Pose and do Caterpillar instead.

Remember these poses are given to you here as Yin poses, not as Yang poses which are active, use-your-muscles poses.  So enter slowly, listening to your breath, which is supposed to be slow, calm and steady, matching your inhales to exhales, and relaxing as much as you can.  I also refer to The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga by Bernie Clark as well as to his website, yinyoga.com and also to Insight Yoga by Sarah Powers.

Caterpillar

This will tug nicely along the ligaments of your spine, while compressing the stomach organs, which helps with digestion. Because of the stretch along your back, you are stimulating your kidneys.  Leaning forward also massages your heart.

Begin by sitting on a cushion or a folded up quilt as I am, on the floor, legs straight in front of you.

Lean forward, letting your back round, if it's okay for your back.  If not, then don't; simply lean from the hips, as I am here, keeping your tummy pulled in to protect your low back.  You can keep your head in line with your spine if you have neck issues.  We elevate the hips because we want the hips to rotate forward.  Because we rarely live on the floor in the West, our hips tend to tilt backward, creating tight hamstrings, and making it very difficult to do forward bends.  This pose can also aggravate sciatica, so that is a second reason to elevate your hips.  Notice I am sitting on the edge of the quilt.  If you feel your sit bones right on the edge, almost as if you are going to slip off, this is perfect for helping to forward tilt that pelvis.

Breathe in and out slowly  through your nose, maybe to a count of 3 or 4.

If you keep relaxing, you may find you start to go further forward...

...letting your head go too, if it's okay for your neck.  This does give a lovely tug on the vertebrae in your neck!  Don't pull; let gravity take you forward.  You may wonder why we round in Yin; many yoga classes insist on doing forward bends with a flat back.  Not so here, and the benefit is that you will get a better, longer stretch along the back of your vertebrae. Think of the shortest distance between to points: a straight line, right?  So curving that line is longer, which translates to more tug along the back of your vertebrae.  Also allowing the rounding allows your muscles to relax which is what we want in Yin.

If it's too intense on the backs of your knees, try rolling up the quilt and placing it behind your knees, or getting a second one and rolling it up so you can still elevate the hips.

This takes the pressure off the backs of the knees, so you can continue to relax and not be thinking, 'Ow! Ow!'  Remember we want to feel tugging, but not so intense that we cannot get our mind off it, and never pain.

Hold for 3 -5 minutes or more if you like.  Close your eyes. You may be surprised at how far you get as you feel your body letting go with the breath.

See how relaxed my arms and feet are though, no effort; surrender.  Yes! I had to keep my hoodie on today as it's not warm out, and overcast.  A good day to stay inside and sew right?  Which I have been doing, which is why this post is out much later than it could be. 😉

This pose pulls along the entire back body, right from your heels, along your hamstrings, and along both sides of your spine to the base of your skull.  It is the line of the Urinary Bladder Meridian, the longest meridian in the body with 67 acupressure points.  Bernie Clark says this helps strengthen the organs of digestion through compression of the stomach organs, and Paul Grilley says this pose is excellent for balancing Chi (energy) flow and as a preparation for meditation.

To come out, slowly sit back up again, and remain in the L-shape, breathing slowly while you are aware of, and enjoy, the rush of the blood and chi within the blood as it flows back into those compressed areas.  This both removes toxins from and nourishes these areas.  If you feel this isn't enough of a release, maybe lie down on your stomach for a few breaths.  Slowly get back up and go back to your machine!
Ahhh!

If you'd like another ahhh! Check this out:

Yep, this is Suburbia, a purchase I made at Craftsy this weekend, and at $42.90US or $56.91CA for 6 yards of fabric, it was a screaming good deal IMHO.  There is yardage ($5.50US/$7.30CA) to be had too, just sayin'...There are LOTS more good deals to be had and hundreds of classes under $20 too remember.  Once I try out their new Boundless Botanicals fabric, I will let you know what I think.  In the photos it looks divine. (Note that the links in this paragraph are affiliate links.)

One last reminder, if you are one of those bit-by-a-squirrel, diverted-by-a-shiny-bauble quilters who found yourself diverted this past month by an attractive quilt project, I have the linky party for you!  Check out my previous post here.  Warning: visiting the other links in that post may lead to more DrEAMi! moments...

DrEAMi! Linky #1

 Welcome to the very first DrEAMi! linky party and my very first time hosting a linky. 

For a detailed explanation of a DrEAMi! click here.  Just like darling Brandy in the video above, who becomes blind to her surroundings, extraneous noises and objects when tracking the elusive squirrel, we, as quilters have experienced that blinders on, nothing else matters, get-your-own-meals, I-gotta-SEW-this-and-sew-it-NOW feeling.  That brilliant bauble of a quilt project, glittery gem of an idea, and, (cue Metallica) "Nothing Else Matters" until it's done.

My frst DrEAMi! (oh yeah, I've had more than one this month, heaven help me, no wonder my family's quilts are always late) was the Modern Trees Christmas quilt you see in that intro post using the Henry Glass Fabrics I won.

My second DrEAMi! happened when I created my first house block for the RSC2017 and promised a tutorial.  Well, I had no photos of that purple house, so what's a girl to do but make another block for the tutorial, (you can find the PDF pattern here), using her favourite colour, buh-LOO!!  These are leftovers from the Meadow Mystery quilt.
Updated to add: I had no idea (note this was posted Jan. 28) that these would be February colours for Angela's RSC2017!  So I was actually ahead of the curve for the first time since I joined her challenge in 2015 LOL!!

I knew right away I wanted to turn this one into a new cushion cover for my new sewing room.
I set it aside.  But it called to me.  It wouldn't take long to quilt up...

I couldn't focus on anything else until it was done....

Sweet Naala... This is not on my Q1FAL list, totally not planned for this quarter, just scurried up in front of my nose and flicked its bushy tail at me.  But I couldn't be happier that I followed my nose and let myself get diverted!

I started with the spirals in the sky separated by wiggly lines, an Angela Walters design I saw online and saved a photo of (and now cannot find where I saved it ugh!), moved onto the gingerbread-type roof scallops, and it just got a-hold of me...

The back before it becomes a cushion cover and this gets hidden! I did write my name and details on the lines across the bottom

...until it was done:

I bound it with the turquoise I used in the star centre. Why I brought that down here and none of the navy outside of half a dozen under 5" scraps I do not know, but turquoise is part of this Northcott line and I snagged a bit of it thinking I might work it into the Meadow Mystery, maybe as binding.

Artisan Spirit Painter's Passion is the name of this line - isn't it sumptuous?

I did an envelope back, not quite like Amanda Jean's at Crazy Mom Quilts, but very similar. I hand-stitched the binding down, my favourite way to finish off a binding.
Here it is off the cushion so you can see it in its entirety.  The top and bottom kind of get hidden by the fat belly of the cushion!

Yep I had fun: the grass (can you spot my initials?!) dot to dot, bricks, the heart, the clapboard, windows...makes me smile!

A trio of cushions in my house right now, two from last year and now this one:

Seems to be a colour trend, no?! If you take a look at my Craftsy pattern store page, you may notice a similar trend!  Incidentally I didn't buy one of the pillow forms for these covers; I simply recovered existing ones I no longer liked or wanted to change up!

Quilt Stats:
Pattern:  Original Design: House Block Tutorial
Size: 19.5" square
Fabric:  scraps and leftovers except for the binding
Batting: Pellon Nature's Touch 100% cotton
Quilted: on my Bernina
Threads:  pieced with Gütermann, quilted with Gütermann, Essential cotton variegated "Ocean Jewels", Sulky rayon 40 wt 942 2209 and 942 1177

So!
What has got you diverted this past month?  Have you 'become the squirrel'?!  I'd love it if you'd share it with us! Remember that a DrEAMi! does not have to be a finished project, but it must be an unplanned something that has had you dropping everything just to sew, sew, sew...

The DrEAMi! will remain open for one week.
Linking up with:
Cooking Up Quilts
soscrappy

An InLinkz Link-up

Whirling Stars - A Finish

When Angela at soscrappy said in mid-January that she noticed that a LOT of people in her Rainbow Scrap Challenge keep making blocks year after year but not always finishing the quilts, I realized I was one of those people!  I only have participated for two years, but I have two flimsies and one set of blocks.  Well I am happy to announce today that one of the flimsies is now a finished quilt!  This is my first finish of 2017 and one of the goals on my Q1 FAL list which you can see right here.

After Mysore the other day, we met up with John and Brandy for a dog walk around the Sarasota Harbor.  I carried Whirling Stars under my arm because I knew I could get some great shots.

There wasn't much time to fuss, just get the guys to hang onto the three dogs, quick pose the quilt, and snap the photo.  It was pretty windy to boot.  I love how bright the colours are in the Florida sunshine.

Hoping to show the texture here by the water's edge

The dogs love to paddle and swim out for sticks at this spot.  It's so interesting because this is a peninsula that juts out into the harbor, with a cement wall on one side and this beach on the other, where several sailboats are moored.  I'd hoped to get a good shot by the dolphin statues fountain but the wind was too strong.

You get the idea of the west-facing side of the peninsula.  That apartment building was under construction on our first trip here in 2004. Can it really be 13 years this summer since Dayna's fateful trip?

I quilted this with wavy lines in groups of three, between which I quilted a string of beads or bubbles, big pebbles really.  It was fast and fun.  How I adore my Bernina!  She loves any kind of thread, never has an issue with tension.  Only problem is her small throatplate (kinda like her operator's mouth at the dentist, LOL) but this motif was a breeze.  After I did one row of blocks I had the idea (or rather I was already getting bored!) to switch direction with the lines.  So it has a bit of a woven effect. 

I used Gütermann cotton thread to quilt this quilt.  Not.  One.  Break.  How I love their thread.  I went with white across the entire quilt, first time for doing that. I wasn't sure about it on some of the rich purples and deep reds, but it looks just fine!  It was wonderful not to change threads as I often do.

Of course I made the binding scrappy in rainbow ROYGBIV order!  I machine sewed it to the front and then stitched in the ditch from the front to sew down the back.

I spied some Jen Kingwell Gardenvale fabric on sale for $5.38 at Fat Quarter Shop that I thought might just be perfect for the back:

You can see the rainbow binding and the mmm!quilts label here too

The fabric is still there, in a few colourways, and nope I am not an affiliate, just always on the lookout for good backing fabrics in the sale sections.  I did also apply, as I always do, a cloth label with quilt details written upon it:

 Of course I hung the quilt in a tree! That massive banyan from the first picture to be exact:

and this one:

rolled up:

Quilt Stats:
Pattern:  Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2016 Original Design (yes, I plan to write up the pattern)
Size: 48.5 X 60.5 as a flimsy; 46 7/8" X 59.5" after quilting and washing
Fabric:  scraps and leftovers, except for the backing which is Gardenvale "Meg" by Jen Kingwell for Moda
Batting: Pellon Nature's Touch 100% cotton
Quilted: on my Bernina
Threads:  pieced mostly with Gütermann 100% cotton and some Mettler 100% cotton; quilted with Gütermann white 100% cotton

In other news of finishes, I finished my second book of 2017, A Walk Across France by Miles Morland (good), finished watching "The Queen" on Netflix, (loved it) and completed a second quilt project!  I've been pretty productive so far.  I'm 2/3 of the way through season 1 of "Gilmore Girls", two episodes into to Season 1 of "Murdoch Mysteries", and back to finishing season 3 of "Call the Midwife".  Also started season 2 of "Nikita", a show I love and watched a lot of when it aired in the late 90s. It was ahead of its time and is eerily similar to events going on today in the world. So I am definitely watching more TV, as well as reading a bit more.  No knitting yet.  I've started Merle's Door by Ted Kerasote, which has pulled me in immediately.  It's a dog story, another non-fiction.  I've completed 12 designs in the #30quiltdesignschallenge2017.  There will be a second draw this evening for a $15 gift certificate to The Red Hen Shop.  It's not too late to join the group of us.  Here are my latest two:

#11 Oh My Stars! and #12 Raspberry Swing, on the Quiltography for iPad app which is a terrific little app. Those are all my own fabrics I scanned in (take a photo and it adds it to your library of stash)

Be sure to check out Craftsy today and all weekend. They put on a surprise classes sale (hundreds of 'em under $20) and they are also having a big supplies sale this weekend, up to 60% off.  Have you kept up with all seven of "The Midnight Quilt Show" episodes?  Not only great quilts does Angela whip up after the kids are in bed, but she's a hoot to watch! But first, I think I'll take a leedle peek at the supplies...

Bella taking a 'leedle peek' at me as I bent over the last few hand stitches of the binding for second finish of 2017.  She kept reaching through, gently swatting at me.  This is also a sneak peek at a my second DrEAMi! (no wonder I'm behind in birthday quilts)

The first DrEAMi! linkup is tomorrow, Saturday, January 28!  That link explains it more fully if you haven't heard of this yet.  Hope you'll join me, either to link up your distracted moment or squirrel, or to check out some others, or to do both!

Linking up
Crazy Mom Quilts
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
TGIFF at Faith and Fabric today
soscrappy for her special finished RSC quilts linky on Jan. 31
Scraptastic Tuesday 
Cut and Alter for the Q1 FAL Link Up

I See Dead People...and Dead Fish

Well now THAT is a catchy title right?!

Dead People
Three more Kickass Canadian 'Nasty Women' (interjection: that's a reference to Ashely Judd's speech a few days ago which, if you didn't see it, is here).

31 - Florence Lawrence, silent movie star, one of the first women to own a production company, she also sought to improve cars by developing automobile accessories; 32 -  Mary Pickford, Hollywood's first superstar; with second husband Douglas Fairbanks, she helped create the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; 33 - Eleanor Milne - a stone whisperer (love that description!) suffered from dyslexia (was made to wear a dunce cap) yet she was Canada's national stone carver for 31 years, until age 68(!)

These went together in a snap, as Kathryn of Next Step Quilt Designs promised.  I love the quote from Eleanor, "The building (Parliament Hill in Ottawa) and I were discussing things."  I can relate this to the many quilts and I who "discuss things"!! I chose a bit of a maverick fabric for her, almost in the purple family, with intricate scrollwork.

Dead Fish
Went to the beach at sunrise again yesterday.  It is a serene place with a different crowd at that time.  This time it was not serene...the SURF--!!

Note the foam where the water spills up the beach. We had some terrific winds two days prior to the walk.

The girls I walked with, seasoned beachcombers for decades upon decades, hoped to discover treasure washed up by these winds and some storms that blew through.  No such luck.  Red tide had all three of us coughing and wheezing near the end of the couple of hours, and the beach was quite devoid of treasure.  Not one piece of coral was found by any of us.  However.

Sadly, there was quite the treasure trove of dead fish.  Interestingly, they didn't smell, they weren't pecked at by birds, and they were incredibly lifelike.  I think they may have succumbed to red tide which is an algal bloom that releases a toxic chemical that affects the central nervous system of fish and other vertebrates, killing them; waves break open the cells, releasing the toxins into the air which affects the respiratory system of humans.
*If you're squeamish, you may want to skip to the end.

With a little research, I believe this is a spiny boxfish, aka burrfish.

Further along I saw this beauty:

I am not a fish aficionado; I have never in my life been able to eat fish (wish I could because they're so good for you) but these specimens fascinated me.

The one below made me think of Dori!

Dori and a Sand Collar

I was intrigued by the yellow on her and the little bit of blue/violet...but upon closer inspection I realized she has a hexagon pattern on her skin!  On the right is what my friend Donna was pretty sure is a sand collar, something I had never seen nor heard of.  She was hoping to be able to preserve it. I thought it was some partially broken down plastic! It was like a soft plastic in feel and texture, similar to firm jelly.  A moment of research tells me it is a Neverita duplicata and found on the Atlantic beaches of Florida, but we were on the Gulf!  Here is a link, and here is a good old Wikipedia link where they are described as gelatinous.  I read that after I wrote 'firm jelly'. 😊

A little further on I came across another 'Dori'; it took me a few search engine phrases, but Google did finally give me the answer: I believe she is a Scrawled Cowfish.  Here is a link.

Setting all squeamishness aside, I carefully touched her.  Just rubbery.  So I stood her up to see how skinny she is.  Look at her lips! And those horns--!!

But LOOK at the side that was protected from the air...

Can you begin to imagine how incredibly stunning she must be in real life in the ocean?  How I'd love to see that one day...yep on the bucket list is at the very least snorkelling, and hopefully one day scuba-diving.  The hexagons just leave me speechless.  Nature, as I said in my last post, is not always warm and fuzzy, often cruel, but always, without fail ahhh-mazing, awe-invoking. Glory of the kind I hear when a choir full-on belts out one sustained note...

I asked my friends who would clean up all the carnage. Was there a team?  They said volunteers do it.  I love feel-good moments like that.  I love quiet, good deeds.

Here is my treasure. Besides the photos I took, I came home with several fossilized shark teeth to add to my growing collection.  They are resting on the back of a new quilted cushion cover.  I've turned the free House Block tutorial block into one that will go in my new sewing room!  There have been almost 250 downloads in one week since I uploaded it. 😃 Stay tuned for the reveal.

Have you ever had a quilt idea or an image grab you like this and you drop everything you are supposed to be stitching and hone in on the one project?  We often refer to these eye candy projects, shiny baubles, as 'squirrels' because, like the dog who hones in on that squirrel, we get tunnel vision and refuse to be dissuaded by anything else.  Well Saturday is the launch of my new linky party for people like you and myself...

If you've already had a DrEAMi! in January, no need to write up a new post.  In order to link up, your DrEAMi! does not have to be a finished project.  Yikes, as well as enabling you to get sidetracked, I now appear to be enabling you to create more UFOs...  Well, I do know there are four Quarter Finish Alongs throughout the year that you can join to get guilted motivated into finishing DrEAMi! and UFO or WIP projects.  I also happen to know that a good friend of mine, who helped me create the squirrel DrEAMi! button, Tish, is cooking up another idea for helping get the UFOs into finished quilts!  Hope you grab my button (I've set it up to open in a new page, just so you know) and join me this coming Saturday!

Linking up 

Sew Fresh Quilts  If you are scarred by all the dead, (but bright!) things, head over to Lorna's blog to see fun brightly-coloured reindeer!

I Like/Love...

This is a (mostly) photos post.  Good luck with that, Sandra, I can hear you thinking! Here are about 10 items for which I am grateful.

I've stashed some of these photos for a while..

A few weeks ago we went to the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers.  It is a place I've wanted to visit for ages.  It did not disappoint.  Clockwise from top left: Mysore Fig Tree in the distance on the left and a stately row of palms leading to the Caloosahatchee River on Ford's estate.  Next is a closeup of another massive Mysore Fig in front of Edison's home. I wanted to do a headstand in front of Ford's tree. Too many people around but that would've been so cool! Mysore is the style of Ashtanga I practise, which originated in Mysore, India.  (yes I'M-sore LOL after some days of practice!)  Close-up of one of my all-time favourite Florida plants, Bougainvillea, and then a row of a few colours of these "paper flower" bushes on the estates.

Purple

This is my third year participating in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge at soscrappy.  Angela picks a colour each month; last year it was a colour with hits of a secondary colour, and we work with that colour.  Some people make multiple small projects throughout the month, most (I think) make a big ongoing project throughout the year.

Last year I ended up doing two ongoing projects. The first was planned, to use my Whirling Star block I designed, the second was basically a squirrel, a DrEAMi! that grabbed me in March, when the colour of the month was purple.  It was Red Rover, a lap quilt in Cozy Modern Quilts, Kim Schaefer's book that I had out of the library, and subsequently bought because I love every quilt in it! I dropped everything and made 6 blocks in, you guessed it, PURPLE!  We had to add a bit of yellow.

Even Bella's favourite beat-it-up toy, her spider-baby, is purple!

Thus Pop Rocks was born, along with a year of playing even more, read fascination, with gradation in colour.  Pop Rocks has still not grown up into flimsy form.  With no plan in mind, it grew into a large number of blocks, 54, I believe, that don't, as of yet, a proper quilt size make.

During the first year of RSC for me, 2015, LeeAnna's cow blocks at Not Afraid of Color grabbed me (see the squirrel problem yet? Ooh I've got it bad.  But do not shake your head in dismay, because all these squirrels have led to wonderful results...somewhere in there there is an acorn to oak tree analogy...)

It took me the better part of two years to get this to flimsy form.  The aunt for whom this is destined loves purple.  Note the final border.  Note as well the purple churn dash on the side of the barn, which, at 6", is half the size of the other churn dashes.

Which brings me to the RSC2017 and January's colour: pure, pleasing, perennial purple.  I told you I designed the barn block basing it on Lori Holt's Barn Along 2013, another blogger's take on Lori's barn, and evolved that blogger's take on the barn to my own version.  During the designing and construction of this barn block, I had an epiphany in the purple haze of my brain:  HOUSES!!

This is the second quilt book I bought, (the first was Pioneer Sampler by Eleanor Burns) and in the cull of books and magazines before the big move last Fall, this one definitely did not get culled.  I have wanted to make the quilt on the cover from Day 1.  It apparently isn't a house block, but a schoolhouse block.  Both names work in my world because: A. I am a teacher; from my skin to my heart, I love to teach and B. I am a homebody.  Home is a presence, a state; it's peaceful, calm, sustaining.  So this is my block for the RSC2017 BUT.... with a quilt block on the side!  (clap hands) Guess there's an emoji for that👏

I sat with this photo off Amazon in front of me, (because my copy is in the storage box right) and drew on graph paper until I had a block that would work for me.  I want 6" blocks on the side of the house (seem to have developed a 'thang' for these babies thanks to Tula Pink's City Sampler and the 150 Canadian Women quilt along) and so it became a 16" finished block! I figure 10 blocks will give me an 80" square quilt before borders, before any Irish chain additional blocks if I want it to look like the one on the cover!

So without any further ado, here is my first block for the 2017 RSC:

I look at it and this is what goes through my mind:

• Dayna! - the vast majority of my relatively few purple scraps are from quilts and quilted items for her
• her Mariner's Compass quilt
• her Shoot for the Moon --still need to write a proper post worthy of this quilt and the daughter who so deserves it
• Brady! - the owl in the window (a find in the 2.5" squares bin that made me grin with glee) from his Jack and Friends quilt
• New York City - a hobo bag I made with NYC fabric purchased at The City Quilter
• Maren's quilt...Judy! her mum and a good friend...Edmonton...
• the Cows quilt, ah the farm...
• Ohio Star - mmm, good friend Julie of Pink Doxies
• Moda Grunge, how I love thee and need more colours

How I adore scrappy quilts.  I plan to set each house in a colour-of-the-month garden of flowers.  I also plan to post a tutorial for this block in short order.  My gift to you, my readers. 😁

Linking up with
soscrappy for Scrap Happy Saturday
Patchwork Times
Cooking Up Quilts

Updates: 150 Canadian Women and Quilt Challenge

#30quiltdesignschallenge2017

(I know, two posts in one day? Like what's with that? This was the planned one; the Q1FAL list had to get whipped up and posted in time for the deadline.)
There were 32 designs in the challenge on Instagram as of 7 pm Friday night, January 13.  That is fantastic!

I had www.tintup.com choose the winners and they were:
1.  $15 gift certificate to The Red Hen Shop

•  Leanne at Devoted Quilter

2.  fabric from moi

• Abigail at Cut & Alter

3.  fabric from Lisa at Sunlight in Winter Quilts

• Cindy at Stitchin At Home

Thank you so much everyone who has joined Lisa and me in this design adventure.  Here are the ones I have entered so far:

The challenge continues until March 15 remember, so there is lots of time to hop in the pool with the rest of us.  Bi-weekly prizes of $15 gift cards are ongoing and Lisa and I will add a prize too here and there.

Guess what arrived today in my mail?!

EEEEP!!  I am both excited and a tad nervous at having this (again) in my hands.  I had EQ4 years ago when we had our first computer, a PC Seanix.  Have we come a long way baby!  However, think: exhilarating, time-eating, and frustrating all in one?  Now I played a bit over the past few days with Quiltography, an app for iPad which is pretty darn cool and at $13 a bargain for your dollars.  EQ7 I bought with some money my mum gave me for Christmas.  She is influencing my life a fair bit at the moment: I brought down with me a few of the books she has given me over the years, have read two, The Camel Bookmobile and Beatrice and Virgil, and am currently reading and thoroughly enjoying, A Walk Across France.  Thank you Mum!!  There also just may be some fabric bits 'n bobs working their way into a quilt in celebration (belated, sigh) of your auspicious 80th birthday...  Anyhow, onwards and upwards to the designing end of quilting.

Scraps Upon Scraps :  150 Canadian Women project

May I just say I am in LOVE with this ongoing (for a year!) project?  I am in LOVE with what I am learning about my country's kick-ass, bold, and quietly brave women.  Why is this not taught more in our school curriculum?  Right...we learn about Louis Riel, but not about his mother or his grandmother and their contributions and brave accomplishments.  That's wrong!  Anyhow, thank you Next Step Quilt Design, specifically Kat, for this project.

Sidenote: heard that Hayley Wickenheiser has just announced her retirement as of yesterday, Jan. 13.  Five-time Olympic gold medalist, she has done INCREDIBLE things for women's hockey.  And, at age 38, she said she doesn't want to put off going to medical school any longer!  Love her, hope there's a block for her, but if not, remind me to make on as a tribute to her, okay?

Here are this week's three blocks:

#25 Madeleine Parent - she studied sociology at McGill University and fought for the underdog, fighting against horrific working conditions,  a 55-hour work week and child labour in Quebec's cotton and woolen mills; #26 Thérèse Casgrain - she is the epitome of the Japanese proverb "Fall 7 times get up 8" because she ran in politics 9 times unsuccessfully, BUT she ended up being elected as the first woman leader of the NDP, a national party; #27 Dame Emma Albani - first Canadian woman to become an international celebrity; performed at Covent Garden for 24 years running; a favourite of Queen Victoria, she sang at her funeral.

Just wow.  Again.  I used French text in the background for Thérèse, and for Emma, red fabric with crowns because of Queen Victoria, and stars because of her global stardom.  Here is the collection of 27 so far.  Love!

I have a plan for the sashing pieces that is pretty exciting!  Once I have my hands on my fabric, I will reveal my plan.  I think the additions of pinks here and there is brilliant, and I am using low volume backgrounds from whites to creams to a bit of greys.  At this point I am just loving the way all these scraps play together.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I am not loving so much the way my scrap vomit vortex fabric scraps are playing ...uh, together?  Please help:

These were just thrown up willy-nilly on the design wall.  I kind of like the diagonal line happening from the lower left...

I am at pretty big and medium slabs now.  These are about half of the lot.  Put 'em together as is or try to make them into a standard size, say 12X18" and contain some of the chaos by sashing the blocks?  Right now it's uncontrolled chaos which is kind of compelling but kind of nauseating to me.  Having never done this sort of thing I need opinions and suggestions please.  It's going to be a good size, or perhaps even two medium sized quilts?  and the scraps have not gone down a whit, but seem to have increased...wabbits....