DrEAMi! #49 Chase Squirrels, Chase Away the Blues

Right?!

That title came when I was responding to a comment left on Wake Up Make Up by Roseanne, and I liked it so much, I immediately named this month's post that! I was saying how I was chasing another squirrel and it was taking away some of the blah and blues that February tends to bring with its never-ending feel of winter, and longing for spring. Whether you watch the squirrels in your yard or you chase the squirrels I your sewing room, they certainly bring joy to us don't they?

Thank you to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for this month's squirrel video. It's the best! It comes from this TikTok user. He has uh, a few squirrel videos, fair warning!

I had quite the squirrelly month! Warning: plenty of distractions to follow.

Gratitude #49

Welcome to another Gratitude post. Several of us write these posts on Thursdays and link up with LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color. Being grateful can totally change your mood, your day, your life. In these seemingly never-ending days of anxiety and unknown, taking time to pause and think about all the things for which I am grateful is very powerful. I've started thinking about things for which I'm grateful as soon as I open my eyes in the morning before I even get out of bed. I don't remember every single day, but it sure sets a tone for the day, a clean slate of possibilities and goodness!

1. I like YouTube playlists. I'm listening to one right now as I write this. Classical. I have several genres. I particularly like this piece, "Danzón No 2" by Arturo Márquez played by L'Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Alondra de la Parra (yeah! a woman!)

Mr. Whiskers Project Quilting 12.4

This is my quilt which, sadly, annoyingly, my own fault-ingly, missed the deadline by eight hours.

Sorry, crazy windy today, so it's a bit of a wonky look!

No matter. It is done, and I absolutely love it. 

It was a literal DrEAMi, (I did nothing but madly sew on this all weekend) because as I have been ahem, known to do before, I left it until the last minute.

9-Patch Spectrum

I have another Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt finished! This baby is staying right here with me. I don't know what it is, maybe loving 9-patch blocks, maybe all the memories tied up in the 120 fabrics surrounding the 9-patches, but I feel very attached to this one.

Yep, we got some more snow, this time just a light one, overnight, so I had pristine snow on the front lawn upon which to toss the quilt. And bonus: a beautiful sunny warmish day!

Wednesday Works in Progress

Because I don't like posts that are, 'Here is my finished quilt, here's the back, here's a close-up, the end', kind of posts, I thought I should give you a peek into what I've been up to up here in my sewing space. I do tend to post progress photos on Instagram, so you might have already seen some of those that follow.

Note: I did not mean to offend anyone with that opening statement; I simply love people's processes, and seeing how a quilt evolves. I also like to keep a record of what's going through my brain as I create!

First and foremost we have had full-on winter for the past couple of weeks. I know because here is the current state of my temperature quilt:

You can see that the last time we had above 0℃ (freezing) was the highs of February 2 to 4, and the overnight low on Feb. 5. It dropped throughout that day and we haven't seen chartreuse temps since. In fact, last night was the coldest (-16℃) we've seen in more than a year, possibly two.  (Yes, I looked back on accuweather.com). But that low temperature meant I needed to use a new colour! Kona Turquoise. Thank goodness it is only one night and then we are back to -10 to -13 until the weekend when it finally smartens up to where we normally are.

Wake Up Make Up

This small quilt was finished in January. As it has finally arrived at its destination this past week, and since my daughter reads my blog, I haven't been able to write about it until now. You've seen some sneak peeks  of sections on the blog and on Instagram. Well, here is what I made:

This was another design-as-I-go project and it was so satisfying. I saw the phrase 'wake up, make up' somewhere. Pinterest or Etsy, maybe something on Instagram. It stuck with me as a perfect phrase for the makeup mat Brianne had requested last summer, and which I'd made...but that was a different mat. Let me back up a bit...

Varadero Vibe - Project Quilting 12.3

As per usual, I had a few ideas for the challenge. Also as per usual, I couldn't decide which one to follow. And finally, as per usual, I chased a squirrel (made another pixellated 9-patch block) while the backburner of my brain flipped and flopped from one idea to the other.  Procrastination at its finest. Finally I went for the harder of the two ideas (often the way I roll), took a course, and made a sea glass quilt, though I prefer to think of it as beach glass.

The prompt for PQ 12.3 at Persimon Dreams was to make a vacation-themed quilt. I've had the pleasure of having had some pretty amazing vacations in my lifetime. In February in Canada, I don't think you'd find a person that wouldn't prefer to be outside of Canada and on a warm beach somewhere. Not quite two years ago, we were, and the beach was Varadero.

That is not photo-shopped or filtered, and was taken with an iPhone 7, no fancy camera or settings. If it is this stunning in that photo, you can imagine how surreal and stunning it was in person.