January Cornucopia

 

Specially for You

~~~~~~*~~~~~~

Present 

If you would be loved

love and be lovable

A photo of a mug at a cafe in Hong Kong taken in February 2014, what a translation, huh?

Here, "Specially for You" is a cornucopia post containing some of the things I've read, listened to, enjoyed, etc. over the last month. Hope you find something you enjoy or find interesting.

**~**

Great interview with Natalie Chanin about her new book "Embroidery: Threads & Stories from Alabama Chanin and the School of Making"

**~**

More embroidery, this time from a cartoonist I've always enjoyed, Roz Chast. They even show the back of one of her intense embroidery images, which is awesome to get to see, kind of rare really.

**~**

There's a free modern 15 12" quilt block design What Is Love? that's available on the first of February.

**~**

This table runner design is really pretty,   Abundant Blooms.

**~**

Another couple of free sew-a-longs including videos happening in February from Jaybird Quilts using their new Fussy Cut rulers for their two patterns Rock Candy and Candy Dish.

**~**

Abstract art did not begin with Paul Cézanne or Pablo Picasso, a more comprehensive way to think about the totality of human artistic expression. So many of the paintings are representations of quilt patterns which is not mentioned in the article.

**~**

Seven ways to use up your crumbs to avoid making Mt. Scrapmore any larger than it is.

**~**

Some tips on creating video content for fiber artists.

**~**

Artificially Intelligent Art (or is it?)

**~**

A different sort of journalling suggested by an IFS(Internal Family Systems) therapist, having a conversation between your parts. I haven't tried it myself, but it sounds like it might be super helpful.

**~**

HRT Stack

Time for some Color Collective fun with solids. The advice was to starch the whole piece of fabric before doing any cutting. It took a while but I can see why it's faster and also safer to not distort the bias of the Half Rectangle Triangles this quilt will be comprised of. Instead of cutting up all of the fabric, all at once, I decided to just cut one strip of each color to play around with and make sure I like making this block.

The cutting went pretty quickly once I got going. I splurged on a Quilter's Select 6.5" wide by 24" long ruler and wow does it ever stay put.

I'm finding I enjoy this color palette while working with it. The addition of the two textured fabrics makes it interesting to handle as well.

The worktable in progress, I don't know why but I like those selvedges a lot and am going to keep them together for now until I figure out what they're going to be.

And just like that I have a stack of Half Rectangle Triangles.

A really really big stack! Doing this project with all solids is sort of brilliant, because you don't have to worry about right sides as you would with prints.

This is a dark/light arrangement that I'm starting out with and sewing together just these so far.

This chevron arrangement is kind of cool.

I think this diamond-ish arrangement is very interesting and I'm probably going to go with this one.

Books of 2022

 

9,658

pages read

29

books read

Longest Book: 525 pages

Average book length in 2022:

 333 pages

MY 2022 BOOKS

---

Just fun to share the book covers of all the books I read in 2022. 

A lot of fiction, some non-fiction, a few quilt related books too.

Drawing Strings

Check it out, I actually made a bag, just a small one for a birthday gift for a friend. I used a recently bought Mini Drawstring Gift Bag pattern from A Spoonful of Sugar Designs.  Hooray for me using a pattern and not forgetting that I have it to use...

I found that the directions were fairly clear with good clear photos that you can really zoom in on to make sure you're understanding the details of the trickier part of the directions. That's one of the nice thing about digital patterns to me, it's a lot harder to zoom in on a printed pattern!

Box corners are always so nice on the finished bag, but sometimes I have trouble figuring that out, but following the directions worked.

Adding in the lining was really easy, I was wondering about the order of steps when I first read the pattern, but then it made sense once I did it. 3-D is so challenging for me sometimes.

The pattern called for using a bodkin to thread the drawstring. and I had to made do with a safety pin, but I've got a bodkin on order for next time.

I think it turned out so cute, and I hope my gift-ee enjoys using it along with the present inside.

I used some of the scraps to sew up a little card.

And I found a stash of glassine envelopes to use. Oooh fancy.

Sunset Stitching

 

There and back again to Tucson for the medical study. One more visit in February and then I'm done with the to-ing and fro-ing. I brought along a little hand stitching to work on while my DH was taking all his video calls. 

The awesome project bag that friend Jaye gifted me worked very well for my purposes. Packed nice and flat in the suit case and the zipper kept everything contained. How do you like the intense yellow chair that was in our hotel room, along with that modern print pillow? It was a nice pop of color in a sort of dark room.

We took off at sunset from SFO and I of course had to take pictures. This made it through the Percolator app very nicely.

Glad to be home, phew.