March already

It seems that we are already in March and that February sneaked past me without my noticing – how did that happen???  I was going to write that not much has happened since the start of the year, but when I think about it, progress has been made in a number of ways. Not long after my last post we were once again put into lockdown here, however probably the most important development since then is that the vaccination program has accelerated and now we are looking at the start of lockdown easing from next week. I had my jab about a month ago, without any bad side-effects, so I’m in that lucky band of people.

This year the Fifteen by Fifteen group members will choose a country that they will concentrate on, and each challenge will be an aspect of the country. The first challenge was to incorporate an emblem of the country. I have chosen to use Norway as my country (a place I visited many years ago, and would love to visit again some time ), and my quilt is based on the national bird – a dipper – and is constructed using the layout and colours of one quadrant of the flag. See if you can see what I mean, you may have to squint a bit and turn your head on one side!!

  

The sight of my unfinished mountain of things pricked my conscience at the start of the year, so I tackled a big quilt that I’ve been putting off for some time. The top was finished ages ago (that’s the part that I like doing the best), and I loved the colours but I’m always deterred from putting the layers together because I never seem to get everything wrinkle free. This time I decided to try a new method, and instead of tring to get the whole thing ready to quilt, I pressed and pinned small sections at a time, and hand-quilted rather than trying to get the bulky thing under the sewing machine. I found it a quiet contemplative exercise that I enjoyed, and that had passable wrinkle-free results – so this might be the way forward for me now. I’m hoping that practise will make perfect. Here it is, modelled by my ‘lovely’ assistant (husband!), and a small section in close-up.

   

Now, the other pieces that I’ve done so far  are all small twiddly bits. Of course my first foray was into my comfort zone, and another scrappy landscape. I think I was feeling in a mellow winter mood when I chose the colours for this one.

Following on from this, Margaret pointed me to Anne Brooke’s YouTube channel, where she is using luggage tags to create small sample pieces every week. Her instructions include a theme for the week and an example of her own interpretation of that challenge. It is something that I am thoroughly enjoying and would recommend anyone to watch and take part (hannemade 52 tags). The size of each piece means that it is something that can be easily done every week – though at this point I am a week behind!  These are – white, hearts, scrappy, fly-stitch, crosses, buttons, hexies, knotted stitches.

A couple of weeks ago I had an avalanche in my workroom (back bedroom) where my ‘stuff’ is stored. The box of blue fabric formed an escape party and decided it would no longer put up with being stuffed into one place. As a result I had a minor sort-out and found fabric that I’d forgotten about. That, plus my never ending quest to use up some bits and pieces gave me inspiration, which has been largely lacking so far this year. So out of the blue this little piece appeared – another one that I enjoyed doing

So finally, I had my birthday a few weeks ago, and one of my gifts was a package of 8″ square stretched canvasses (my husband is beginning to understand what strange things I like). When I was discussing this with Margaret, I mentioned that I feel obliged to use these this year, so we decided that we would choose a subject of ‘Woodland’ and work towards producing a piece every month using canvas, frames, or whatever other things we have hanging about our ‘store’ of things. We previously produced a number of pieces on this theme for an exhibition we had in Frodsham, Cheshire – but we both liked the theme and decided we’d use it again. I’ve made one piece and have another in my head, but not yet done. See what you think of the first one – it uses the first of my canvasses – happy birthday!

  

 

Joan