November Cornucopia

 

At the beginning of the month, the Angel's Trumpet went wild and crazy with so many blooms it nearly fell over. I think it was from the 2" of rain in October. Anyways, here's to the sunny yet cold days of winter when we'll not be enjoying this color and fragrance. It'll be evergreens inside and red poinsettias soon enough.

Here's a round-up of links to things I've read or encountered or enjoyed this month, hopefully helpful or maybe even inspiring to you. Obviously it's a little light this month, given I missed most of the usual time I spend online due to being ill. Sigh, next month maybe!

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Folded Fabric Star Ornaments out of strips of fabric with how to fold video.

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The Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt this year called, Chilhowie has a really pretty color palette this year, based on irises.

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Mini-quilt challenge theme for Curated Quilts is "Abstract" which is very tempting to try and make a piece to enter.

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Remember RAOK? Random Acts Of Kindness? Here's a new twist on that, the Kindness Kalendar. (Yes I know, get over the intentional misspelling) You can get a personalized advent calendar of random acts to do, one per day.

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Really recommend listening to Ultra, the new podcast from Rachel Maddow, an engaging listen to a story you likely have never heard of from the US' fairly recent history.

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Percolator Countertop

 I was cleaning up the kitchen yesterday, when I noticed that these randomly grouped bright colors. From left to right, a glass jug of orange juice, the bottle of Dawn soap, my green insulated coffee cup, and the first pomegranate from our tree. I pushed them all closer together and took this picture. I just really liked the colors together.

Using the percolator app, this was the first random pour or random mixture of settings. I love how the transparent glass jar and plastic bottle of soap disappear as a shape and just become a part of the background.

Oh how I wish my countertop actually looked like this, wouldn't that be an amazing look?

I think I like this one the best, I used the "clouds" setting which makes the colored circles look more like fabrics to me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Happiest of Thanksgiving Days to you if you celebrate. Otherwise, I hope you have a very happy Thursday!

We are having a hybrid all over the place Thanksgiving at local relative's houses on different days. Today we head to my SIL's, she's doing the turkey, we're bringing the sides and my daughter is bringing pie and cocktails. It's going to be great to all get together.

Our sides that we've just finished making are Whiskey Drunk Sweet Potatoes, Artichoke Parmesan Sourdough Stuffing, and Cranberry Wine Orange Spice Sauce.

Then on Saturday, we'll make all the same sides, as well as a turkey and bring it over to my parent's house to celebrate. And in between, on Friday it's my DH's birthday. So, a lot of to-ing and fro-ing for all the very best reasons. There is so much to be thankful this year, and I am counting all those blessings.

Duplicate Colors

Don't make me explain this too much, but I've gone and made a spreadsheet for the Pantone Project. I like to keep track, that's my excuse. But, my actual reason was to check that the distribution of colors over the total 100 cards would end up being somewhat balanced once we're all done making blocks.

So this great new spreadsheet has obviously got exactly 100 rows (for those 100 postcards). I thought it would be pretty easy, fill out the rows with each card's information, right?

It's got several columns, for color number, color description, card sent, card received, block made by me, block made by Jaye, color group, and duplicate?

Duplicate? Yes, I found that there were three duplicate cards!! They are pictured up above. Turns out that there were two pinks and a red specifically. As you can imagine, this made it take a lot more time than I'd estimated to finish making the spreadsheet.  So, essentially I'm short three new colors. And now I'm wondering if Jaye's box of postcards has the same duplicates or maybe different ones? Or maybe she has those three other colors I was also meant to have? So far the cards I've received from her have also been in my box, so who knows?  

Now I'm really curious about all this, and I'm kind of laughing at the assumption I'd made that the two boxes were identical. Pantone has A Lot of colors of course, so that was kind of a silly assumption. 

The big question is: Does this really affect our Pantone Project overall? No, of course not. But there are choices to be made here. I could send off both of the duplicates and assume Jaye has enough extra red and pinks. Or we could choose new colors to substitute in for the duplicates so that we actually have that even 100? I think that's what I'd like to do. Maybe it'd be a way to nudge that color grouping balance that I was initially checking on by making the spreadsheet. By the way, according to my informal classification, there are 11 Yellow, 7 Orange, 5 Red, 14 Pink, 12 Purple, 14 Blue, 18 Green, 14 Brown, 4 Grey, 1 Black.  Not terribly well balanced. So maybe the three duplicates should be reds?

Now This Is A Project

The Pantone Project is coming more fully into view, now that I've gotten a lovely surprise delivery of the blocks and squares friend Jaye has completed. She very helpfully labeled all of the fabrics with the color name or number from the postcard. Mine are winging their way to her, but not labeled at all, although I have pictures if needed.

It's a very different mixture of colors compared to the ones that I've made so far, don't you think?

Here's how they look when mixed in with the blocks that I've completed.

Very interesting mixture of prints and solids and colors that we've got going in the first 33 out of 200. I am not minding the browns as much as I thought I would. They're all playing pretty happily together.  Once we have even more choices available, playing with patterns you can make with these varied blocks is going to be a lot of fun.


 

Matching Up PP

Two more Pantone Project blocks are completed, two more very sharp and pointy blocks.

 It's a sort of motley assortment of colors at the moment, like I definitely wouldn't have chosen these particular ones to go together as a piece. But, I think the look will end up much more balanced once all 100 blocks, well thats's actually going to be 200. As in, 100 blocks from me and 100 from Jaye, are incorporated. Or....not, and we'll have 200 blocks and 200 colored squares that end up getting dispersed out into different projects? Like you could put all the greens in one thing, etc. I'm just really curious to see how this changes as the distribution of colors changes.

I actually went through the 100 cards before we started and sorted them into color groups and it is pretty well divided amongst the various colors, neutrals, browns, greys, etc. But they aren't all clear hue colors, although there are some, but the rest are tints and tones and shades.

Puttering Back

For my first foray back into the workroom, I chose to work on something small and that was ready to go. My next Pantone Project blocks. This array of fabrics vs. postcards has been waiting for my attention for a while so I didn't have to exert myself by lugging fabric boxes and digging through them.

I got out all of my Quilter's Select rulers to get down to work. I really love these things,  I needed that extra stability today.

I'm randomly choosing blocks that I haven't made yet until I've gone through all of them at least once. This is the printout from the pattern friend Jaye helpfully drew out for us to use in EQ8.

It took hours and a long nap break but I got four of them done! Well, actually eight blocks, one for me and one for Jaye.

Here's how all the blocks I've made + plus Jaye's blocks look. She's got a great post up about her work on this project so far, check it out.

And here's how they look after messing around a bit. Fun stuff so far, I'm loving the variety of tones and such, a lot of variation in there. And wow was it was great to actually sew something again, my brain is slowly coming back online. Two days with no fever, hurrah and fingers crossed it was just some weirdo reaction to an antibiotic (temporary medicine-induced lupus?!) 

 

Wandering Wednesday - Desert Museum

 In the midst of being ill, I flew for the first time in several years to Tucson to participate in a second stage medical drug trial. My DH got to go along as my official "caregiver" and "chauffeur" which he took very seriously (haha). We had a day free before we were traveling back home so we drove to the outskirts of Tucson and checked out the highly recommended Desert Museum. 

I always forget the utter strangeness of the Saguaro landscape. The tall cactuses fill in the vertical view instead of the trees my brain is used to.

Inside the garden they had several Saguaro skeletons that were still standing. It was fascinating to see them still housing birds, lizards, insects, etc.

We went pretty slow since I feeling so crappy but we really enjoyed being outside in the warm (but not too warm) desert.

Another skeleton overlooking the long view of the desert.

Yowch, the ankle biter chollas.

This is the skeleton of a dried up cactus leaf. Look at that super interesting structure.

The coyotes were ignoring us in favor of soaking up the sun, a wise choice.

Look at the hook shape on those larger spines.

So very spiky.

There were many shady structures like this one with benches, lovely to sit and enjoy the view.

This very noisy bird was nesting or something near the javelinas.

I was really taken by the variety of cacti in the garden. The variety of colors was impressive.

Very Dr. Seuss-ian eh?

Pretty little bright fruits on the very ends.

Purple even!

A Few Pieces Left

 

The start of something new? Maybe? By using the easily accessible remnants of the most recently finished project? Possibly. Likely even. Some of my favorite finishes have come through this sort of backing into the end result process.

I just couldn't resist throwing up onto the design wall the cut-out pieces that didn't get used in the making of Come On Through. I could see this initial arrangement working maybe with some tweaking or expanding of the negative space. If I was to try to make it, I could head over to EQ8 and plop in these pieces' measurements to figure out the background shapes and sizes required. Or...I could just put these pieces away in the scrap box and move on to something new. 

I've been ill for a couple weeks, so this is literally all that I've done so far this month. Sigh. Very frustrating. 

Flower Friday - Angel Version

 

My Angel's Trumpet has gone a little tiny bit crazy. Those two inches of rain last month were a boon to this plant. To walk down the steps you have to do the limbo which is not exactly safe.

When you get underneath it, it's fun to look up through the tree and flowers.

I have promised to cut it back severely as soon as all the glorious blooms are gone. But for now, it's a thumbs up from me.

This blossom is aggressively trying to take over the second story deck. That's how tall this plant has grown.

A half-selfie underneath the murder bush or death tree as my DH calls it. All parts of it are very poisonous.

And then there's the pomegranate bush/tree. It's on the way to all yellow leaves and the contrast with the pomegranates that are nearly ripe is beautiful.

Another tree that will get a major trimming once it's done leaf-changing and ripening the fruits.

Two Blocks Stitched

 

Here are the two blocks I embroidered for the SJSA/BAM quilt effort.

There was a lot of glue-i-ness going on which was a bit tough to hand stitch through. But it turned out pretty well and stitched up pretty fast, once I got going.

These two blocks were great to work on, I can't wait to see how this quilt turns out!

Illustrated November To-Do List

 Here's how ye olde design wall looks at the beginning of this fine November. As you can see a large section is quite empty. That's because it got cleared out to be able to officially photograph the Ruby+Bee challenge quilt, Come on Through. I've left the lights up and assembled and the center cleared because I have more finishes I need to photograph for future purposes or just for posterity or whatever. Obviously that going up first on the list so I can have the use of my design wall once again...

Onto the: Illustrated To-Do List For November

1. Photograph the completed quilts that are in a pile and un-photographed. 

2. Sandwich the Orange Bullseye, quilt, bind and label it.

3. Make more Pantone Project blocks.

4. Do some more Gelli plate printing to get ready for the SAQA/Printers exhibit (due 12/16)

5. Paper-piece more blocks for the Y.E.S. coat.

6. Japanese Houses, sandwich, quilt, bind, label.

7.  Finish up some Holiday presents, keeping it vague here, maybe on purpose.

8. Make first block from Color Collective.