DrEAMi #48

Welcome to another year of chasing squirrels, of all things Drop everything And Make it! The photo below is one of several on this great (pretty hard) quiz on CBC Kids. I scored 2/8 so clearly I don't know nearly enough about squirrels. I do know that I have as many quilt projects either on the go or planned for this year as the leaves in this squirrel's mouth!

DavidBarber - Flickr

I haven't really had a DrEAMi this month, unless you count the Project Quilting makes. It's not for lack of temptation, but so far I have kept my head down and been a good girl. Boooorrring. Says the squirrelly part of me. Oh I did pull out some 2.5" and 3" squares and actually cut some 3" ones and made a few bear paw blocks with 4-patches for the paws, but shhh, it wasn't a DrEAMi because it was only two blocks, and 'just to see' and 'so that I remember this' and maybe it will be another leader/ender project if I finish my pinwheel binding triangles leader/ender one... Do I sound like I'm avoiding declaring a new start? I may be. It's all Yvonne's (Sew Yummy) fault. I saw her scrap project, and well, ding-ding-ding! I have lots of appropriate fabric to make that... Betcha can't resist...

Rainbow Way

I am so pleased to present my Rainbow Way quilt which was one of my 2019 RSC projects. This quilt pattern was in McCall's Quick Quilts August/September 2018, though the original was done all in greens.

I am also glad we had another beautiful sunny day, albeit with the coldest to date overnight low of -10C. One good thing about that is that I got to use a new colour in my temperature quilt! Time is running out for me to run fresh new quilts down to this lake lot for photographing: it has been sold, as I mentioned a while ago, and they've been doing a lot of work to fortify the shoreline at the bottom of the cliff, which you can see from the above photo.

Gratitude #48

"When you're present in gratitude, you can't be anywhere else." - Jay Shetty

Here is my list for January of things for which I'm grateful. A group of us link up each week or month, whatever you like, with LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color, who kindly continues to host. These post are uplifting, both to read and to write.

I love reading, ergo I love books. I've read five so far this month! I like fantasy, and I love YA (Young Adult) Literature. Somehow, in the Libby (digital library) vortex of searching for authors, I came across Holly Black, whose Tithe trilogy I read years ago when I was still teaching. She has a new trilogy out, The Folk of the Air, and I read all three in no time at all. Yes, they are that good. I lived in them for the entire time. Don't you love when a book keeps circulating in your brain while you go about your everyday life? You keep speculating as to what will happen, and revisiting what already did, but living in that world? 

Project Quilting 12.2 Fussy Cutting

The challenge this time was to incorporate fussy cutting into our project. I did two projects again, two of each, though due to real life happenings, one of the four items is still as you will see, in the blocks stage.

Still, I do have three finished items.

One of my quarter of the year goals has been to make two cat mats which I donate to either the Windsor Humane Society or to Kittenaide. Cats photographed sitting on something cute or homemade like a little cat-sized quilt, tend to get adopted faster. And what cat doesn't love a snuggly place to curl up?

Bella already tried them out, as some of you may have seen on Instagram.

Black Scraps Sorting Box

This is box #10! It's been done for almost two weeks, but I'm just getting around to posting it now. My fourth finish in 2021, in keeping with the fourth book I'm currently reading! Off to a great start, I am. 😇

I've really enjoyed making these boxes. The tutorial is on Angela's blog, so scrappy.

To Do Tuesday Update

Popping in with a quick 'what am I up to' post. The PHD programme is helping to keep me focussed for now.

Last week's list:

1. Keep up with the temperature quilt.✅ Posted on Instagram.

2. Start or dare I say finish quilting the Smooches quilt.✅ Done and posted here.

3. With nearly half the month gone, I want to at least pick a UFO from my PHD list and get the backing assembled, ready to quilt.✅

For January, I've decided to finish this UFO from 2019, my Arrows RSC quilt.

I spent a little time contemplating whether I would keep this quilt for myself, sell it, or put it on the comfort quilt pile. Once I decided I wouldn't keep it, I knew then I'd save the two rainbow backing hunks of fabric for an RSC quilt I am going to keep. Off to the stash I went to see what I could use up.

Love That For You

My first quilt finish in 2021 is a wrap (ha, love saying that)! This is my OMG for January.

It's actually my third finish, one being my mini for Project Quilting, little hard to wrap up in it, and the other shown on Instagram but not yet blogged, a black scraps sorting box. This, however, is a lap quilt. 

Yay for a little sunshine today! The temperatures have been lovely this month, but it's been mostly grey skies.

Aren't the pinks just wonderful? It is such a good colour with which to work in the grey long month of January. This quilt has a bit of a story to it, as is the case with most of my quilts. It is a quilt I designed for one of PQ #11 challenges last year. This one, the third one I've made, is going to Brianne's best friend who is an essential worker. She, like me, absolutely loves Schitt's Creek, but she has been a fan longer than I! Both of us, unbeknownst to the other, think that Brianne is much like Alexis. The quilt is named for one of Alexis's famous sayings, one Brianne and Michele use between them quite often. 

Accountability and PhD

For those of you who have followed me for a while, you know how I love lists, and organization, and checkmarks. I have a rather amorphous list of my 2021 Goals that isn't published this year, but that doesn't make me any less accountable, and besides it's in my planner. However, this year instead of the FAL which seems to have fallen apart (correct me if I'm wrong) I've decided to join the PHD  (Projects Half Done)programme with Gail of Quilting Gail.

Basically you must finish 12 UFOs, and you must finish all the projects you start in 2021, so as not to add to the UFO or PHD pile. This is hard for a squirrel-chaser who has the entire canopy of trees this year to explore because of no Island Batik commitments and deadlines! In fact, as of the writing of this post I have completed all my deadlines, even the self-imposed one of updating my sadly neglected Gallery of 2020. The only on-the-horizon deadline is to make a lap-size quilt, (the baby one is done), for my Quilt Along, which begins April 3. It feels actually really good!

Project Quilting 12.1 I Am Divine Light

This is the second year I've participated in Project Quilting hosted by Kim at Persimon Dreams, with Trish of Quilt Chicken, the dreamer-upper of challenges. It is right up my alley: a challenge, pushing your creativity, with a deadline!

This week we were to create a quilt using predominantly the two Pantone colours of 2021: yellow, aka Illuminating, and grey, aka Ultimate Grey. I immediately thought of a line I love from Bruce Cockburn's "Lovers in a Dangerous World", 

Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight

and somewhere between that thought and I don't even know the exact moment when, the idea for my mini appeared, fully formed, deep in my brain, in the grey recesses where fissures appear and out comes the light of creativity.

Pink Projects Popping up Partout!

"partout' is French for everywhere. It worked for my alliterative title, and since I'm deep in another L'Inspecteur Gamache book, it was à propos. 

So, after a few posts on Instagram on Saturday I took the rest of that day and Sunday and almost all of Monday off that social media platform. It was rather wonderful, and I mean to do that more this year. I don't know if it's the menopausal muddle in my melon or what, but I certainly seem prey to being easily sucked for an hour or more into that vortex. I plunged into my pink scraps and strips with abandon. Ahhh! I petted. I played. It was perfect.

What once was a neatly arranged pile of pink, slowly but steadily erupted into this disarray. What first evolved from the strips were these blocks for my Rainbow Scrap Challenge Project #1.

On Point

Here it is! My December challenge for Island Batik, my last challenge as ambassador, is done! I've named it On Point. You know how I love double entendres.

As I said in the process post, this is the first quilt where I've actually designed a portion of it because I want to showcase the quilting I know I'm going to do there. I wanted to do ribbon candy there and thought the strips of aqua and flame would show it off perfectly. The pearls row finishes off this section to perfection (though they are definitely not perfect!) adding to the meaning of the quilt's name. The quilting becomes a part of the piecing. I love it. And wee-ooh wee-ooh, but didn't HandiQuilter talk about this very phenomenon in their newsletter?! This was after I'd  made this section, so imagine my surprise!