SAHRR Round 5 Two Colours

This time it was Gail of QuiltingGail, the creator of this fun round robin activity, who chose the prompt for this week's round. She asked us to use just two colours in this round. I already had the one purple, a marbled-ish berry, and I decided to put a lighter blue with it.

It definitely brightens up the quilt!

I only started this round on Monday, after spending all last week on Etsy orders and Project Quilting. I knew I'd be away most of the day on Tuesday, sitting in a courtroom for juror selection. Not fun, even more so when I discovered the case was sexual assault on a girl of about 10 or 11 that happened two years ago. Now that the stress is over of pleading to the Universe that my number not be pulled from the drum by the court registrar, it was actually quite interesting and sobering to take part in this critical piece of our democracy. Why has this taken so long to get to trial? Simple answer: Ontario, as most provinces, has not financed our judicial system as it is meant to be, so courts are jammed, and cases like this take two years to come to trial. Why do so many governments, Conservatives especially, take funding away from key components of a healthy society, like the judicial system, education and healthcare? It is infuriating. For their mindset, profit is king, at any cost. Our premier would rather give all his 18+ year old voters $200 close to election time, I kid you not, rather than put that money towards any of those three key areas.

The entire juror selection process took about 4 ½ hours during which time the approximate 90 of us (I counted chairs while waiting to get checked in) couldn't leave the room other than to go to the washroom. While court was in session, no phones were allowed, and they had to be silenced. The court registrar pulled numbers in pools of 20, (by juror number and occupation only, no names, and we were told by the judge not to use our names with our jurors either) took those selected to another courtroom where the judge talked to each potential juror in front of the lawyers to determine if they were eligible, (this process took about 90 minutes or more) and then court resumed in our courtroom where she requested the court registrar pull just ten more in the next pool in order to get the required 14: twelve jurors and two alternates. Sidenote: I used to teach the play Twelve Angry Men to my grade 12 English class--talk about feeling all of that to some degree! Those ten people filed out and about half an hour later, the court resumed in our courtroom, and after another speech, she dismissed us. Note that the accused was present during all of this, extremely uncomfortable and disconcerting, as well as the girl, now about 12 or 13, with her mother, though they pulled them out before proceedings started. This is the third time I've been called to jury selection, twice before in Alberta, about every 15 years, and it had better be the last because I am not cut out for this. The first time was for three different cases, embezzlement were two and assault and unlawful confinement was the other and I freaked the entire time that drum was opened and a number pulled. Interestingly, there the judge spoke to each potential juror, the lawyers each stated whether they approved or not that juror, right in the same courtroom where we all were, and not in a separate one.

I got home around 2:30 and after decompressing with MacGyver, continued a little more work before I had to teach yoga, yeah, rather a busy day for this retired quilter! After supper I pushed to finish, and just before bedtime, it was complete.

This was the perfect prompt, because last week I had left it with the curves in the four corners and around the top butterfly. I had actually thought of doing a piano key border between the curves in the four corners and centre top butterfly at that point but decided to wait and see. Because I try to limit myself to only using my scrap boxes, and under half yard plastic drawers system, you will notice that there are actually two very similar in tone and shade of both the blue and the purple.

I also pulled out the Swiss cheese butterfly fabric just to see if I could add in a few butterflies to those 2.5" x 3.5" piano keys to add to this quilt that seems to have developed a bit of a butterfly theme.

Designing on the design wall as I go!

I popped in just two at first with the first of the piano keys. This is when I was incorporating a half-inch border with the absolute perfect fabric: a soft blue and hits of light purple Eleanor Burns older one I'd bought for watercolour quilts. All I had was 20 cm x WOF, enough to cut four 1" strips.

I didn't take any other process photos of me lining up the rectangles along the sides and then adding in more butterflies . Finding that the big one would work at the very bottom was a thrill! Putting a curve around it would have cut off too much, so it got the deep purple bars on either side because I needed to make up one more inch. The math and odd number I have ended up with has made my brain ache. A couple of the piano keys on each side finish at 2.25" and not 2", sigh but it all fits (oh yes there was a fair amount of reverse sewing and cursing involved.) The quilt is currently 43" square.

Sadly, the deadline was Monday at midnight, so I did not make the linkup this week. The last round was posted this morning and we are to do whatever we like! At this point I have no idea what that will be, though I have intended all along to use more of the yellow floral trellis in the final round.