Staying Warm

This is what it looks like in our little piece of the world:


I realize an awful lot of North America looks like this right now but this is unusual for us!

I had to scrape some 6" of snow off the top of my car yesterday afternoon before I could go out for more food. DS had to chip ice off the windows underneath the snow too. I feel very fortunate to still have power when so many are having to do without (and however are they managing?!). Our home is all electric so if the lines go down for any reason we would be up the proverbial creek. I don't even like to think about it. {shudder}

Happily, I have been keeping warm under this new-to-me quilt:

Because I have been keeping a studio journal of sorts for several years I was able to go back into old journals to discover that the original row-by-row round robin project that was the seed of this quilt began in January 2001. That's the part in the center of the bed/quilt. I started the project by making the two rows of reindeer (the snowball blocks). There were six other women who contributed to the top by making one or more rows. I set the rows together to create that center panel and then decided I wanted something more than a wall hanging. That's when I started making the sampler blocks that became the two side borders.

(right side border)

(left side border)

We moved in 2002 and consequently the quilt got put in a box and neglected for a few years. I unearthed it again in 2007 and began to assemble the top. Now it's a done deal. Woohoo!

I honestly thought the Christmas quilt project had been a UFO much longer than that. Maybe because I've intended to make a Christmas quilt for our bed pretty much ever since I started making quilts. Just to keep things in perspective, the next quilt that gets finished will be this one:

...which has been a UFO since about 1995. I'm currently tying it and auditioning binding fabrics. Last night I was tempted to add it to the bed and sleep under it unfinished!

Never Say Never

Everytime I work on a quilt that uses a black fabric I vow to avoid black in the future. It would appear that by doing so I only doom myself to work with it again!

My Christmas round robin quilt is back from the quilter and I'm sewing down the binding. When I can see to sew it that is. I didn't get a particularly bad spot in this photograph, but there are places where I'm sewing black to black with a black thread. It doesn't help that we've had nothing but heavy cloud cover for the last week (or more). My studio is the best-lit room in the house but even so I feel like I'm sewing blind.

These have been keeping my spirits up during this gloomy week. They are tiny carnations, and they have the strongest scent of cinnamon that I've ever encountered in a fresh cut flower. Absolutely wonderful. I wish I could somehow subscribe to a constant supply of these beauties.

I have also been working on projects I cannot show you for fear of spoiling the surprise for folks who may or may not read this blog. One of the hazards of the season. :- )

I want to get this Christmas quilt bound as quickly as possible as we are apparently headed for some seriously cold temperatures for the next several days. Even now we are experiencing very high winds so I'm going to stop here, just in case the power goes out.

Pondering Goals

I think I was a teenager before the concept of setting goals was officially presented to me. And it did not go down well, let me tell you. Every time I was given an assignment that involved setting goals I would put it off, try to get out of it, moan and groan and complain until finally I was forced by the deadline to sit down and apply myself to the task. I never followed through on the stated goals if I could help it either.

Now that I'm in my fifth decade I have matured sufficiently to find goal setting not only easier to do but also desirable (at least in some cases!). Who'd a thunk it?! It only took some 40 years.

I bring this up because I've been thinking about how I'm going to cope without the Take It Further challenges next year. There doesn't seem to be enough interest amongst this year's participants to keep it going another year and Sharon is going in another direction with the challenge she's sponsoring in 2009. So I will have to challenge myself. I want to do a small monthly project, and I want it to be as much a mental challenge as an artistic one. (Does that make sense?)

I figure I need to come up with 12 challenges before January 1 otherwise I'll spend half of January trying to figure out what my challenge is! Also, part of the fun of TIF was waiting with bated breath for the first day of the month to find out what the challenge would be. So I'm planning to write out the challenges in advance, put the slips of paper in a tin or a box and draw one out on the first day of each month.

This is a new experience for me, planning this far in advance. By nature I am a leave-it-to-the-last-minute kind of gal. ;- )

It's not really eye candy, but I can't leave you without pictrues of some sort. I've done a couple more rows on my band sampler:

You'll notice I didn't bother with guidelines. I'm determined that this is to be a working sampler, not a showpiece. As a recovering perfectionist it's actually more difficult to let myself stitch freestyle than to mark nice even lines and have my work turn out more polished.

I have also sewn up these Bow Tie blocks:

They finish at 6" but they sure look bigger than that to me! Right now they're orphans; someday they'll end up in a preemie quilt or something. Oh, and my Christmas quilt has come back from the quilter. All I have to do now is trim it and bind it. Time for a seasonal movie!

More Color!

On my way home from my daughter's house the other day I took the opportunity to stop in my favorite shop for embroidery supplies. I went in intending to indulge in a purchase of maybe 5 to 7 dollars. An hour and a half later I left with $20 worth of happiness.

This isn't all of it, but there were only two other skeins in my bag that didn't make it into this picture. These are Watercolours by Caron. I bought them in part because I figured the luscious colors would help me get through the gray days of winter. (I had to lighten up the photo a bit; I think I overdid it.)

Then yesterday I finally took the plunge and dumped all of my embroidery threads on the floor to reorganize them. I'd had all my cotton flosses grouped according to color in the bigger plastic box you see on this shelf. The smaller tote had the lesser quantities of rayon threads, silk, linen, and perle cottons.


Now the bigger box holds my neutral threads and cool colors, and the smaller box has the warm color threads in it. My cotton flosses were strung together by color on shower curtain rings and then all the rings were loose in the big box. I've kept all the cotton flosses strung on their rings and then strung the other fibers together on another ring (within the color family). The rings and the balls and skeins of bulkier threads are all kept together now in one or two-gallon Ziploc bags.

The Ziploc bags keep the color families separated from each other within the boxes.

After all that I finally put my band sampler in the hoop and had a go with the new threads and some new-to-me stitches:

The top row is Portuguese Stem Stitch done in two different threads. The first part and last part of the line is done in 6 ply cotton floss, the middle bit was done with two strands of the Watercolor thread (which is a 3 ply cotton).

The second row is a laced running stitch. The bottom two rows are the same stitch, another version of the laced running stitch. In all three of these rows I did the running stitch in a perle cotton (#5 or #8; the 8 was really too fine). The yellow row is laced with another of the Watercolor threads (all 3 ply). The next row was laced with a fine ribbon intended for knitting. The bottom row was laced with a thread called Overture by Rainbow Gallery.

Can you tell that I like the variegated colorings? ;- )

(The stitch links will take you to Sharon B's Stitch Dictionary. She does not have the Portuguese Stem Stitch up there yet.)

Whitman's

I went to the thrift shop Monday. It was so much fun! Mostly because it had been a long time since my last visit. All the Christmas goodies were out on display and I found some not-Christmas things for my own use. A package of small artificial leaves, 2 yards of straight black fringe (think roaring 20's dresses), short pieces of black boa that might end up on my Halloween hat someday, four silk ties...

and another Whitman's candy tin (minus the candy of course!).

Look! It's a bicentennial tin! And it's in pretty good shape too.

It wasn't until I started photographing them that I realized how many Whitman's tins I have. Whitman's candies were one of the special treats we would only see at Christmas or maybe Easter when I was growing up. I don't remember ever getting a tin full of chocolates, but there must have been the occasional cardboard box or why would they be such a fond memory? Anyway, I remember being fascinated by the boxes because of the simulated cross stitch.

I like the one on the bottom in the photograph above because it also features buildings or houses, another of my favorite things.

There are two more I didn't take single shots of... and who knows what might be hiding somewhere else that I haven't remembered?! One of the reasons I like the Whitman's tins is their shape. They're flat and rectangular and usually have a hinged lid. One holds my patterns for small things like dolls. Another keeps my coloring supplies contained. One has elastic. A couple are empty, used only for decoration. Not quite sure what I will do with this new acquisition (the bicentennial version). I was just excited to find it and be able to take it home for fifty cents :- )